It is becoming increasingly apparent that brand image is becoming increasingly important in SEO, as well as Internet Marketing in general.
Social media is a huge part of this, and with so many social media tools at our disposal, it is getting much easier to help grow our businesses through social media integration.
However, as with all too many aspects of the Internet Marketing world, people are pushing the conversion rates without worrying about the damage it is doing to their brand.
Take today for instance. I signed up to spotify. I had a UK account, which doesn’t work over here, and my wife wanted to send me a playlist.
Sure, great. So I go to sign up, and then get told I need to use my Facebook to sign up.
I did it.
Then I thought to myself, no.
Fuck that shit, I don’t want to have my only log in choice be through Facebook, there is no reason to force me to do this other than to help them increase their brand recognition by telling people what am listening to on Facebook.
I don’t want my life on display, nobody needs to know what I am listening to.
I don’t know how far Spotify are going to go with the social media connection I just gave them, and I don’t want to have to find out. I have now removed their connection.
Remember, this is what they ask for
-
Your e-mail address (oli@.com)
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Your birthday
- Permission to access your data when you’re offline
- Permission to post to your timeline
This sounds simple enough, and sure they might need the email and birthday. But permission to access my data, basically means they can download everything about me. Permission to post on my timeline means they can advertise themselves on my wall.
No, just no.
Spotify, and every other company that does this, you have just caused irreparable brand damage in your relationship with me.
Even worse, some brands I had attributed a certain level of quality to do some insane amounts of data mining through your Facebook connection.
Udemy, a company held in high regard, not only collects all my information in terms of likes, education, etc, but it also collects the personal data of my friends too.
Does this connection have any benefit for me? No.
These are just two recent examples of how brands have lost me in the last week alone. bad social media connections can hurt your brand.
If you are interested in improving your brand image through social media connections however, it can be done.
- Collect the bare minimum of what you need to allow users to log n to your site.
- Don’t auto post to the walls of people who connect to you, allow them the choice.
- Provide sign up and log in options.
- Make it clear that you do not store any information that you don’t need from a technical standpoint.
By making it so the user can opt in to the more aggressive areas of Facebook connect, rather than have a nasty surprise when they actually check app permissions you will see much less brand damage.
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