While most mainstream blogging platforms boast a decent commenting system, blogging pros may wonder whether they should consider outsourcing their comment section or leave the native system up instead.

Since outsourcing ones comments can be a touchy subject (as there are passionate voices on both sides of the issue), here are three reasons why you should and should not outsource your communities voice to third parties.

Comment Outsourcing FTW!!

Despite the advancements of comment sections over the years, there are many of you who prefer to enhance your comment community without having to utilize custom hacks or plugins.

For those of you on the fence about outsourcing your comment sections, here are three reasons why you should “embrace the future.”

Threaded Conversations

With the exception of WordPress, Typepad, etc., most blogging platforms do not support threaded conversations.

While this is not a major issue if one receives less than a dozen comments per post daily, it can turn into a nightmare with people shouting at each other (using “@ comment name”) as well as difficult to follow conversations.

Most (if not all) third party commenting services (like IntenseDebate and Disqus) offer this feature, which makes it easier to follow conversations as well as debates.

Community Moderation

No matter how good your anti-spam tools are, spammers, trolls and “Mr. off topic” always seem want to derail the conversation from the original post.

Many third party commenting services allow users to report offensive comments (which sends them to you for review), or even “bury” them from public viewing.

This can save you hours of time spent moderating your comment section, which means you can spend more time writing excellent posts.

Bandwidth Saver

For those who self host their blogs, an active comment system can potentially suck up bandwidth on your site, which could easily stir up the wrath of your hosting company (yes, even the unlimited ones).

Outsourcing your comment section to a third party service can help you reduce the bandwidth blues, as well as your bill at the end of the month.

Native Comments All The Way!

Despite these reasons there are some of you who are hesitant about outsourcing your comment sections, especially the paranoid types (I say that in love) who prefer to keep everything “in house.”

For those of you hesitant about handing your community over to the hands of a stranger, here are 3 reasons why you should NOT outsource your comment section.

Confusing Layouts?!!

While many native comment systems embrace the traditional approach (i.e. Name, Email, Website, then comment), third party commenting systems often put the comment section first which can confuse users.

Worse, many of them are filled with extra login buttons for Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, etc. which could confuse new comers and turn them into lurkers instead of active participants.

Even though services like Disqus have tried to solve this issue with a cleaner layout, users may not loathe the new system and loudly voice their opinions via email.

Group Think Censorship

Despite its benefits, community moderation can backfire as users can censor minority viewpoints that contradict the “wisdom of the crowds” by burying (or disliking) the respective comment.

More often than not this becomes a major issue with political and (to a smaller degree) tech blogs where users are zealous towards a specific viewpoint.

If dislike is an unavailable option, users may flag (or report) the comment to the moderator (which can become a major headache for the blog owner).

Slower Page Loads

While third party comment services can save you bandwidth (at least for those who self host), they can also slow down your page loads as well (just like any other third party service).

Bloggers fanatical about page loading speeds will probably not appreciate this fact, as a slower loading page can easily result in a lost reader (which translates into lost revenue).

Should I Outsource My Comments?

Truth be told it depends upon what your blogging needs are. For my case, my sites were being over run by human spammers, trolls, etc. so third party comments became a necessity in order to keep the discussions family friendly.

Others may choose to outsource their comment sections for different reasons, and there are plenty of blogging pros who choose not to outsource their comments for other reasons.

For those of you with active blogs, do you outsource your comment sections, and if so why? (or why not?) Feel free to share your opinions upon our native comment section below.

Geo-social aggregator Hotlist thinks that by combining data from Facebook Places, Twitter, Google Maps and Yelp, users can actually get a lot more value out of their checkins. Its app shows the popularity of nearby events and venues, whether or not your friends are there, the male-female ratio at a given spot, and recent Yelp reviews and Twitter posts for any location you might want to hit up.

It’s one of the first Facebook Places API integrations we’ve seen, and it’s doing a pretty thorough job of combining a ton of unstructured (from the user’s perspective) data into truly useful tidbits of actionable information.

For an on-the-go-oriented application, it helps to have a strong suite of mobile apps. While we’re still waiting for an Android app or a BlackBerry mobile offering, Hotlist does have an iPhone app [iTunes link] available for download now.

As you can see from the site’s interface, there’s a lot of available data out there, and Hotlist does a decent job of pulling it all in. It has the ability to show you where your Facebook friends are currently checked in, and it can post back to Facebook about your intended excursions in the future, which is a nice traffic-driving mechanism for the site.

We weren’t able to test out the iPhone app, but of this we’re certain: Twitter, Facebook and Yelp already exist online, and they’re doing just fine. Where Hotlist stands to win is in the mobile arena. A truly excellent set of mobile apps — not just an iPhone application — can make the difference between an also-ran in the location market and a truly useful and sticky app with a long runway.

What do you think of Hotlist, both the site and the iPhone app? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

More About: facebook, Facebook Places, Hotlist, twitter, yelp

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When Johnson heard that lessons had been cancelled for a week, he set up the group and reportedly had 300 people – both university students and school kids – volunteer on the first day. Equipped with shovels, wheelbarrows and buckets, the volunteers set to work in groups of 20 around the city, liaising with emergency services authorities.

Johnson told AFP: “On Saturday night I saw all these Facebook groups like ‘I survived the quake, lets party’ and ‘buy a T-shirt, Christchurch quake 2010′ had sprung up. I thought ‘come on guys, surely we can do something more positive than that and do something positive for the community’.”

It’s great to see Facebook being used in this way – and also the fact that it’s being written about. Quite often it’s the negative stories that make the headlines, whether it be the woman who threw a cat into a bin or the Israeli soldier making fun of her Palestinian captives. But Facebook, and the web more generally, is a wonderful tool for citizens as well.

Back in the early to mid 1990s when I was a university student, it would have been impossible to organize a clean-up effort like this on such short notice. The choices would have been organizing far in advance via posters, flyers and student newspaper or joining an existing relief effort by a big organization or government body. Facebook just makes it so easy for these sort of spontaneous relief efforts to occur – and experience teaches us that people will help if it’s easy to do so.

Photo source: Image of earthquake damage from Sam Johnson’s earthquake group page.

My point, and I will make one, is that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got great social media presence if you don’t fix the basics.

I’m so frustrated right now, for something very simple. I received my first Comcast bill for my business Internet service. Oh, I noticed that it’s sending the bill to the service address, not my business address. I’ll just run in and change that on the account via their website. So far, this should be simple, right?

No.

I go to make an account. The account doesn’t take. I try again. That also doesn’t take. I click their “contact us” thingy and put in all kinds of information so that I can chat with someone on the site. After about 11 minutes (might have been less, as I really didn’t use a clock, in full disclosure), they tell me that because I’m a business account (which was the 3rd thing I said to the chat person), I have to call some toll free number.

Well, okay. So much for an online world.

Now, I call the first number. It says something like, “you’re a business customer and you have a very special number. Call this.”

Wow! I’m thinking, I’m going to get this resolved in no time. No. A new phone tree. A bunch of button pushes. A request that they can SURVEY ME after the call before they’ve even come close to resolving my issue, and I’m writing this post while I’m on hold.

Let’s review: This is to set up a stupid online account so I can change a stupid mailing address.

Frank Eliason is Gone

Frank Eliason, if you don’t know that handsome man in the picture up top, was the voice of @comcastcares for a few years. He got the company more ink for his innovative customer service while they were otherwise drowning in a sea of negative press.

Let the record state that all of Frank’s online employees are tweeting my face off while I’m writing this. They’re being SUPER helpful.

But they shouldn’t have to be.

Comcast Needs to Shore Up Service

Social media is not a crutch. Just because you’ve now received high marks for being responsive via Twitter (and thank the sweet blessed customer service fairies for that, because the mainstream methodology still blows, but if your standard web flows and call flow still stink, you can’t rely on the social media side to fix it up.

Quality customer service trumps PR and it trumps social media outreach. It’s the basics. Please, Comcast, this was a really really simple transaction that ate almost an hour of my day, got my riled up, and earned you a negative blog post (because bloggers are whiny, I’m willing to admit).

Wouldn’t this merit a reconsideration of your delivery methods.

I used to run call centers for the phone company back in the way old day. Call me, if you want. I won’t make you press buttons.

“Have you ever borrowed a friend’s phone to use Facebook and then forgotten to log out before you handed it back? Maybe you logged in from a public computer, but accidentally walked away with your Facebook session still active. Now, you can see if you’re still logged in on other devices and immediately log out on those devices from one central control in your account.”

The upgrade is rolling out gradually to all users. Once it’s live for you, access is via the “Account Security” section of your Account Settings page. You should be able to all your active sessions along with information such as the login time, device name if you’ve previously named it through the login notifications feature, the approximate location of the login based on IP address, and browser and operating system.

The blog post notes that if someone has accessed your account without your permission, you should be able to shut down the unauthorized log-in before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.

This update makes a lot of sense. In the mobile age, people are increasingly accessing Facebook from multiple locations and devices, and a central way to manage that would be very handy. Also, while the blog post describes the example of unauthorized access as “unlikely”, I know several friends who have had their accounts hacked or accessed in some way and their status updates filled with spam. While some less technically minded users might find using this feature a bit daunting, there are quite a lot of people who have enough technical savvy to make good use of it.

I had a chance to ask questions to Dogasaur.com’s founder and CEO, Josh Abrams, and head of Business Development, Erlend Wilhelmsen, about the success and the social features of Dogasaur.com. When asked how they managed to reach so many Facebook users, Erland says ‘Without getting into too much detail, we can safely say that the traffic generation and getting past 200,000 likes was done through a mix of engagement ads pointing to the fan page itself within the Facebook network and organic growth through seeding. When you get past 10,000 fans, you can experience a snowball effect with the right play and the right content.”

So, with this answer not disclosing too much information, Wilhelmsen makes a point that once pages get fairly popular on Facebook, a viral effect can naturally occur.  Not to mention that dog related topics are a widespread popular interest and people are drawn to the page through a shared love for dogs.  “At a deeper level, people are incredibly passionate about their own dogs. In this light, Dogasaur is perfect for social media. Besides your children, there is little in life you care about as much as your dog(s). If you look at the Facebook wall for Dogasaur, you’ll notice that a large percentage of posts are really people posting pics of their dog. Then people follow up with likes and comments if they fancy it.”

Abrams and Wilhelmsen anticipate the growth of Dogasaur’s page to rise with time. They expect growth to be around 100,000 more fans per month because social elements are really keeping users busy on the site and the word is spreading fast. The Facebook page has been a clear success and this may have worked so well because Dogasaur did their homework before the launch. Erland stated that “We’ve spent over a year tweaking the product and observed user feedback. We tested various content styles while figuring out what worked and what didn’t before we started implementing a strategy and road map for our Facebook extension.”

Dogasaur is a place to learn facts about dogs, participate in a community and be entertained by funny pics and videos. Do you think you’ll join this site to see what other dogs are doing or share your adorable dog with the world?

JobRoller is one of the best looking job listing themes that we have tested. It has 5 color schemes to choose from. The contrast of colors used in this theme make it look quite professional. You can change a lot of things right from the back-end without needing a developer to help you out.

JobRoller is more than just a simple job theme. It can handle all types of jobs and makes it easy for job candidates to filter through your listings to find the type of positions that work for them the best. It supports custom post types and taxonomies, so your blog stays separate from your job listings at all times.

JobRoller is perfect for paid job listings. It is not only compatible with PayPal, it can keep track of your transactions, saving you time to focus on other aspects of your business. This theme can be localized too, which means you are not just limited to English job listing sites.

I like the fact that this theme is social media friendly. It supports both Twitter and Facebook. ShareThis is integrated into this theme too. JobRoller can work for your ads, giving you another way to monetize your website.

JobRoller is the perfect theme for anyone interested in starting a job board. It’s attractive, easy to customize, social media friendly, and ready to go right off the bat. It can give your website a solid foundation for the future.

How To Determine The Value Of A Lead Or New Customer

Before budgeting the amount you are willing to spend on Facebook ads, you first need to determine the value of a new lead. That lead could be in the form of a Facebook fan, an email address, or a new customer. Whatever it is, we’re not going to spend all of our money without having some idea of how much value we’re generating. For each type of organization, that value is measured in different ways.

KPIs

In large organizations, and often with large ad campaigns, key performance indicators (KPIs) are frequently used to use as benchmarks for measuring performance. While it’s not easy to track the conversion of a branded ad campaign into new sales, organizations will develop targets such as “Increase the awareness of upcoming product X by 40 percent”. There then needs to be a way to measure this.

While there are a number of tools in this space, Facebook has attempted to accomplish this through a partnership with Nielsen for a product called “Brand Lift” (first described here). The product essentially polls users before and after being exposed to an advertisement to see how effective those ads were at building awareness of a product.

New Customers

For smaller businesses, increasing the bottom line is typically the primary goal. For example, a dentist will want more clients, and isn’t really as interested in building engagement around his or her Facebook Page. As such, a Facebook advertising campaign will be aimed at driving new customer leads. Those leads could come through emails or phone calls, depending on the needs of the dentist.

Similarly, a small online business which sells subscriptions to a service, will spend as much as possible to generate new customers. In fact, an online subscription service should be willing to pay up to the average life time value of a new subscriber.

Life Time Value Of The Customer
Ultimately, whether it’s the dentist or a company generating a subscriber, each customer has a projected “life time value”. Any business should be able to determine the approximate value of that customer and be willing to, at a minimum, spend up to the life time value of one customer just to test an advertising campaign. For those finance buffs out there, we would actually want to calculate the present value (see definition) of the life time value of the customer.

If the cost of a new customer ever exceeds the present lifetime value of a customer, we are by definition, losing money on our advertising expenditure.

New Fans

While I’m not going to take the time to describe how to calculate the value of a fan right now (that will come in a later guide), given that so many people are investing in ad campaigns on a cost per fan basis, we thought this area deserved some attention. Investing in Facebook fans should take places after you’ve exhausted all of your direct advertising channels. This should be common sense, however the reasons is that Facebook fans do not generate immediate revenue.

However if you’ve exhausted those channels and want to build engagement and “awareness” around your brand, it’s necessary to come up with an amount that you are willing to spend on each fan, based on an expected value of each new fan. As I mentioned earlier though, this subject requires an article of its own, so we will discuss it there! (Make sure to subscribe to our Facebook marketing weekly newsletter to be updated about these articles.).

The Most Important Rule

Now that we’ve gone through some of the metrics for calculating the value of a new lead or customer, we need to figure out how much we are going to allocate to an advertising campaign. The single most common mistake that I see however, is that companies either aren’t willing to spend enough to experiment, or that they don’t test the performance of multiple versions of their ads in order to reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Don’t be one of those companies!! Instead, consider a traditional break even analysis of a business. In any new business, it is expected that the company will lose money for the first few months (or even the first few years) as they grow the company to scale. The same theory applies to new Facebook advertising campaigns. Your new ad campaigns may not be profitable immediately.

However after extensive testing, all ad campaigns should be profitable (otherwise it’s not really helping you … right)? As I explained earlier, “profitable” is a relative term here, as every company has a different way of measuring a campaign’s success. All campaigns should all eventually become successful though. The only question that a company needs to answer is: how much can they spend until they expect every dollar in to the campaign to generate at least a dollar of value out of the campaign?

The answer differs from company to company. Clearly, a large Fortune 500 brand will be able to invest much more to see how effective Facebook performs as an advertising channel. A small business, which only generates a few hundred thousand dollars a year, probably won’t want to invest as much money. While there isn’t always an exact answer to this, as long as there is someone running the Facebook advertising, it should be expected that the campaign will eventually become profitable.

As such, businesses must be willing to invest in the early losses of a campaign, in order to get to the point where it will eventually become profitable. Each campaign has its own amount, however when I hear that a business is willing to spend $30 to test out advertising on Facebook (we’ve received multiple inquiries from people mentioning numbers that are as low as this), it’s clear that they don’t understand the basic procedure for developing a new Facebook advertising campaign.

Facebook advertising requires continuous improvement. If the cost per lead does not either decrease or immediately produce a net positive, the current strategy being implemented is ineffective.