Tips for Effective Facebook Status Updates (and other industry news on our minds)

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With so much happening in the digital world this week, we’ve compiled a few industry stories that have us thinking. Share your thoughts with us on these stories or others on our Text 100 Facebook Page!

PR Gaffe of the Month: When Fake Twitter Accounts Fail – Lobbyists for the American Petroleum Institute were caught creating 14 fake Twitter accounts posting pro-pipeline propaganda. Bottom line: fake Twitter accounts may work for satire (for example, @BPGlobalPR) – but should never be used as part of a legitimate PR campaign, especially a political one.

Google To Launch Verified Google+ Accounts for Celebs – Following its 10 million member milestone, Google is reported to be looking in to different methods for verifying the identities of celebrities and public figures who use the Google+ social network. We can only hope this means a brand experience will be coming next!  Whether Google+ will replace Twitter or Facebook remains to be seen, but users should keep in mind it’s still a different network – therefore, requires a different strategy for engagement.

Curation Tool Storify Partners With MSNBC’s Breaking News For Sourced News Content – We’ve been big fans of Storify since the start, and are happy to see the curation platform adding some intricacies with this partnership with MSNBC’s @BreakingNews handle. Now, users can add updates to their Storify posts directly from the Breaking News website. It’s an interesting social combination between a traditional news publisher and the new citizen journalist-like curation that Storify allows for, and will likely lead to additional partnerships with other news organizations.

Are Social Snap Tags the Next QR Codes? – Glamour Magazine is the first brand to test out use of a new social technology called “SnapTags” – interactive social icons that allow for instant connections between brands and mobile consumers. Similar to a QR code, users simply take a photo of the SnapTag with their mobile device to pull up more information via the brand’s social presence. The major difference is that users don’t need an Android or iPhone to use the technology (users with camera phones can take a photo and send it to a short code), and rather than taking them to a microsite, they are taken to a brand’s Facebook or Twitter page.

6 Tips to Make Your Facebook Status Updates More Effective – We’re never at a shortage of tips for increasing Facebook engagement! Wildfire Interactive, creator of a number of Facebook tab applications for Pages, suggests the following six tips (note: you must fill out a form for access to the full report):

1. Ask fans to “Like” your update.
2. Encourage comments by asking yes/no questions.
3. Don’t use the Facebook links box – post links in the body of your status update.
4. If you post your own videos, do use the Facebook video upload option.
5. Target your messages to different segments of your audience.
6. Make it worth your fan’s while to look out for your updates.