In conversation with a friend today, something interesting came up. Recently we talked about the advantages of tagging and it’s uses on Facebook. Twitter has had this functionality practically since day one (as far as I’m concerned), but Facebook just started this within the last couple months.
From a marketing perspective, it’s a great way to create awareness of your page on other’s pages, plus it helps keep your messages a little cleaner.
So, what if someone tags you on Facebook that you don’t want to have anything to do with? When someone tags you, their message comes up on your Facebook fan page, in addition to theirs. What if you don’t want that message coming up? Or what if they are saying something that you don’t like?
This was brought up by my genius marketing buddy, Brad from Sunjammers, who will never give himself the credit he deserves. In his business, he markets and sells kayaks. Sure, he sells tons of other things, but his staple product is kayaks.
On his Facebook fan page, he regularly makes industry related status updates that are helpful and of value to his audience. He uses the tagging feature often to provide hot links back to the products of fan pages that he references for two reasons:
- To gain exposure for his brand
- To provide a simple and easy way for his fans to find more information about what he’s talking about.
Number two is the same as in my blog and the blog of many social media marketers where we provide hot links embedded in words that are relevant to what we are linking to. It’s about creating value in what we are writing about, being as informative as we can. Now, it’s not to say that we shouldn’t be careful about this and go crazy. It’s important to keep this linking tame, not to over do it.
So, let me turn the question I asked above around. What if when you are tagging others, they complain that they don’t want you to do that, remove your comment and ban you from their page?
My marketing philosophy is and always has been very open, I try to remain very giving. I’ve never claimed the “market secret” excuse to withhold information knowing that if someone really wanted to figure something out, they’ll figure it out. Why wouldn’t I take the credit for helping them, rather than being their opposition? If someone can learn from me, I take that as the ultimate compliment. I’ve always believed that there is plenty of business to go around, plenty.
So, what if someone complains about your tagging antics? I say good riddons. If that’s the way they do business, then that’s their perogotive. You can’t do anything about it. If they ask you to stop or ban you from their page, just leave them alone.
If someone is tagging you that leaves unfavorable remarks about your brand or is counterproductive to your marketing efforts, send them a message on Facebook, talk to them, try and work it out. If you have to strong-arm them, you can always just ban them. More on that later.
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tagging people when they arent in a photo is just another form of spam – you call it marketing as im sure you call pop-ups and banner ads all over websites.
It is a crime and the people who do it should be killed
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