I love the Robert Kennedy quote about how he looked at “things that never were and asked why not.” Why not is a great question. I love flipping it back onto others when a new idea is on the table. And right now, I feel like aksing why not of our friends in Palo Alto.

It seems that Facebook is dead set against small businesses (or namely organizations with only a handful of fans) creating usernames. Quick history – about a month ago Facebook let users and big businesses or brands with over 1,000 fans create usernames for their profiles and pages. This outraged a few firebrands like us and shortly thereafter they said that the ‘others’ could create usernames on June 28th. Okay. Unfair still. But progress nonetheless. So as I waited on Sunday I found that I could still not create usernames for a couple of our clients as Facebook has implemented a no usernames for pages with less than 100 fans rule.

As I’ve outlined many times here this is just plain wrong. First of all, it’s counterintuitive. Usernames provide a quick and easy way to promote your Facebook presence and - wait for it - get more fans. If usernames are primarily a promotional tool, why would you deny this to the most promotionally challenged segment of your userbase?!?

There are probably some businesses that Facebook has key relationships with that they need to take care of. That’s fine. But what is the danger in letting all pages create usernames, Facebook? As one collegue said during the original late-night username land rush, great — now I can do something on Facebook that I’ve always been able to do on Twitter.

If you’d like to add your support to asking Facebook why not, join our (irony alert) Facebook fan page and let them know that small business matters.

Photo credit Daniel Slaughter via Flickr

I love snacks. Snacks are great because they’re … well, snacks. Small in size, sweet or salty. One of my favorite pieces of new media marketing vernacular is “info snacking.” For those un-indoctrinated, info snacking speaks to all of the little snack-sized bits of our story that we leave out as a sort of a bread-crumb trail leading back to our businesses in the hopes of creating stronger brand engagement. Photo albums on Flickr and Picassa, conversations begun on Facebook and MySpace, stories unraveled on blogs and YouTube — not to mention numerous Tweets. All of these are info snacks that we leave out for a culture that has gradually shifted toward an increasingly steady diet of bite-sized nuggets of content (e.g. Twitter use is up; newspaper subscriptions are down).

On my run this morning (working off more literal snacks), I thought of the work ahead of me when I returned to my desk — editing a video, writing a blog, uploading photos, tweeting across several client accounts. None of these projects resembled creating what we think of as traditional ads. And yet, I think the term ’snacks’ can be misleading. I think the preparation of quality info snacks demands as much craft, devotion, and time as creating traditional modes of commercial messaging. And, as alluded to in our last post, you need a recipe if you want it to come out right.

Your guests are hungry. Are you leaving out enough snacks?

Years ago I worked for a small educational publishing company. As I sat down to begin work on what would ultimately be the first of my two complete overhauls of the company’s website, I remarked to a colleague that this first website looked like ‘creating a website’ had been an item on a to-do list — that they’d simply created an online business card, checked it off their list, and moved on. That’s not an indictment as much as it was the way of Web 1.0. Many simply felt they needed to plant a flag on this internet thing and then get back to the real work. Most marketers have seen the error of their ways and have upgraded their website several times as they strive toward a dynamic Web 2.0 experience. Though now there is a different item appearing on those checklists.

In this age of social media, more and more marketers regardless of their understanding of these new channels want “on that Facebook thing” in much the same way that the checklist marketers of the early ’90s wanted “a website on those interwebs.”

Recently I heard some words of wisdom — ironically, at a marketing best practices conference. “Why do we come to these conferences, learn what everyone else is doing, and then go home and copy them. Why do we follow, when we should lead.”

So how does this apply to you and wanting a piece of the social media action? Simply put, all of these new channels — Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube (to pick a few low-hanging fruits) — are more than just items on a checklist. Want a Facebook page? It can be created in 10 minutes. Same with creating profiles or accounts on all of those other sites. If you want to be a follower, the good news is that it doesn’t take long to establish a simple presence on these channels. You can probably spend the better part of a day creating accounts on all prevalent networks and community sites and cross a BIG item off of that beloved checklist.

But what if you want to lead? What if you want these channels to actually work for you?

Then you are ready to realize a simple truth — social media is a means not an end. Creating presences on these channels is not the item on your checklist but rather a means for accomplishing an even bigger item on your checklist — developing greater brand engagement with your customers and potential customers. Checklists aren’t bad by nature (I use a ton of them to keep several different things straight). Often it’s what’s on them that’s wrong.

Using ‘greater brand engagement’ as your goal, how can you use social media as a means to help you achieve that? Which social channels would best support these goals? Too often marketers grab all of these sites off the rack regardless of how well they support their business’ goal. Maybe a photo-sharing presence on Flickr would be better than a blog for your business. Maybe Facebook isn’t right for you. In order to answer these questions you first need to know what you are doing.

We are currently working on a project for a client that I cannot wait to share with you that does all of these things. We have a branding/messaging goal for the client and are building the means for accomplishing this through social media. More on this when we can share it but leading produces a greater sense of satisfaction than following.

In the meantime, ask yourslef if you have a social media strategy or just a checklist? Are following or leading?

Our Facebook movement is just a weekend old and already there is news in the form of this post from Mashable. The executive summary is that Facebook has responded — no doubt spurred to action by our incredibly small, er – modest protest. And while they aren’t lifting the username restriction (no usernames for companies with <1,000 fans) right away they will allow all of us serfs to claim page usernames on June 28th. Though this is good news, I chose my words carefully in the last sentence. It is reminiscent of the lowly serfs (smaller brands) getting the table scraps after the feudal lords (big brands) have chewed the mutton off the bone. Why the delay anyway, FB? It’s like the exact opposite of a staggered start where you give the runners with a disadvantage on the track a better starting position. What is the disadvantage that the big brands have? Huge budgets? Armies of marketers? As stated earlier, this is just plain unfair from the biggest player in social media. It also seems especially counter-intuitive to the spirit of this new media which thrives on transparency and equality. So we’ll wait our turn and get our usernames for our “little brands” in a couple weeks. Hopefully there’s more than table scraps remaining …

Thanks to Gregg Hennigan for the tip on the Mashable story.

So first let’s get it out of the way. I was one of the geeks that was up late Friday night waiting patiently to get my Facebook username. I am pleased to report that I have locked down facebook.com/westergaard for my personal profile. I guess the early bird gets the … Westergaard. A rare occurrence of that name coming in handy. Too bad I cannot say the same for my friend Mr. Smith.

Now on to the real point. When assigning the username to my profile, Facebook asked me if I wanted to also secure usernames for several of the small businesses and organizations that we manage Facebook fan pages for. Sure, I thought and continued. Turns out I cannot create usernames for any of them due to a new Facebook rule. Each time I got a message that said that usernames can only be created for pages with 1,000 or more fans.

Maybe it’s just me but this seems incredibly counter-intuitive when the very way to get more fans would be to easily promote a catchy Facebook username URL. Much easier to promote Facebook.com/westergaard than it is facebook.com/profile/user123456, etc.

We help several of our clients with their social media presence and are very active supporters of Facebook as a great way to connect and share brand stories with customers. I often tease Dean that he sounds like he’s a sales rep for Facebook. One of my favorite things about Facebook has been the level playing field for brands. It’s always been fairly easy for a small business to have a similar presence to a national brand on Facebook. Now it appears that Facebook has slapped small businesses in the face (or a slap in the Facebook perhaps) by limiting their page promotional tools. Like Barack Obama and Coca-Cola have a tough time generating fans …

In what’s something of an irony I have decided to address this via a Facebook fan page. Let’s try to get over 1,000 fans ourselves and show Facebook that small business matters. Join the movement now.