Playing with Google+ Pages for Businesses is like unwrapping the world’s most disappointing Christmas present. We put out the milk and cookies. We waited up, hiding under the covers, ears attuned for the sound of 32 tiny reindeer hooves prancing on the roof. And, when we trundled downstairs on Monday, bursting with optimism and excitement, we discovered that some unshaven fat guy in a red suit had ransacked our pantry and left us with an empty Millennium Falcon playset, not even a Han Solo action figure in sight, and two hours of cleaning frozen reindeer poop off the roof.

All right, maybe it’s not as bad as that (thanks for the memories, mom), but the analogy is the same. We were eagerly awaiting Google’s foray into the world of company pages, hoping that it addressed shortcomings that currently exist in other offerings on the market, including Facebook Pages. However, due to a bevy of missing ingredients and some questionable information about the Google+ user base, Google+ Pages tastes like yet another bad soufflé served up to the social media palate, failing to rise to the occasion. And, while Google is still refining their recipe, it’s not ready for consumption, particularly for proprietary higher education institutions which already have myriad stable social venues to engage on.

Here’s three reasons why:

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It’s almost the end of the work week! You’ve been working hard, attending meetings, answering phone calls and, in general, being fine exemplars of what it means to be a business professional. In celebration, here’s a compilation of links that you might have been too busy to notice.

First, kudos to Lincoln Group of Schools for capturing the human side of their students in their 65th birthday video:

Now, without further ado, some of the interesting stories floating around the Interwebs this week.

• How For-Profit Colleges Can Save Themselves—and Higher Education (The Atlantic)
• Imagine America Foundation’s Adult Excellence Award Offers Funds to Underserved Non-Traditional Students (Imagine America)
• Are We Ready To Support Online Learners? (Inside Higher Ed)
• Program Integrity Regulation Q&A (Department of Education)
• University bids for students on Groupon (Chicago Tribune)

Results of the survey were announced today at LeadsCon, following an online survey of 293 marketing professionals in higher education.  Highlights of the survey include:

- 65% of for-profit marketers identified the Department of Education regulations as a significant or major concern, with nearly all schools reporting one or more plans for change in response to the regulations, ranging from demanding transparency from third-party affiliates to increasing academic standards

- 63% of schools are planning to increase their social marketing spend

- For-profit higher education marketers are reporting success with certain phone inquiry solutions, including hot transfer phone call solutions – more than half are planning to increase their spending

We will  be releasing a full report of the survey in mid-March.  LeadCouncil members can access it at www.leadscouncil.com.  Non-council members can register at blog.cunet.com/2011SurveyReport to receive a copy.

It’s just about a month into 2011 and students are really optimistic towards higher education this year, at least according to education-related New Year’s resolutions published through social media.

Between December 25 and January 8, CUnet’s social media department combed Facebook, Twitter, message boards and online comments look for New Year’s resolutions focused on enrolling and finishing some type of higher education. For content that could be identified as a relating to a specific degree field (“HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Resolution is to become a nurse at the end of summer!” for example), we segmented the posts into specific categories of Healthcare, Criminal Justice, Massage Therapy, Cosmetology, Automotive, Art & Design, Online, MBA and Culinary. In total, we reviewed nearly 1,100 pieces of content.

This was a pretty exciting study to do. At the most practical level, being able to look through a window into how people are talking about higher education allows marketing messages to be refined and tailored better – the truth, better told, as it were.

Color me a romantic, though. I think the real value here is in being able to see the actual words that people are writing. In any industry, it’s possible to lose sight of the very real people that make up your target audience, largely because you spend so much time talking about them as numbers. If you want to work in social media, though, that’s a death sentence. The resolutions we examined provide a very real, very human reminder of that point.

Our press release about the research is located here, but check out a full version of our Wordle word cloud beneath the jump.

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During an announcement on 60 Minutes last night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that, as of 3:12 CST today, Facebook users will have a revamped profile. Fair warning: for anyone who wants to get the profile right now, jump right to the bottom of this post.

While this redesign does not affect Facebook fan pages at the moment, some journalists are speculating that the redesign was created to make the social networking giant more appealing to advertisers (as if it needs another reason).

The changes are many, but, perhaps most importantly, each Facebook user page will now show a biographical abstract of a user right at the top of their page, including information about the person’s education, job, home town, relationship status and birthday.

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It’s finally happened. Facebook is going to educate the world! The New York Times reports that Facebook has partnered with The London School of Business and Finance to offer a “Global MBA.” Specifically, they are promoting this program as “the first internationally recognized M.B.A. to be offered through a Facebook app.”

This new venture began last month and already has over 30,000 users. The app is free to install and gives the user access to lectures and study groups. The catch is that the app is only a test drive – you will have to pay approximately $23,000 to have the ability to take tests and actually earn the diploma. The degree is certified by the University of Wales. Founder, Aaron Etingen, expects 500,000 prospective students to take the free “MBA Test Drive” over the next year. The “Test Drive” environment is highly desirable and a positive step in weeding out unqualified students.

This is just another example of how some educational institutions are pushing the envelope and using social media as significantly more than just a marketing channel.

Expanding upon the “Company Pages” feature recently implemented, where members are able to follow companies, LinkedIn now provides an added service that will allow users to submit product and service reviews for a company.

Companies with profiles already on the site will be able to add features such as product listings, multimedia, and a tab for member reviews.  In addition, once a member submits a product recommendation, their review becomes visible to all contacts in their network, helping spread the word of their endorsement, and in turn promote company brand awareness.

LinkedIn serves as a business social network in order to help users build professional networks and gain contacts. Over 80 million are already members worldwide, and this is continuing to grow. But with the increase of business marketing tools on Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is looking to maintain its hold on the social needs of the business community.

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Cooks Source Magazine has developed an amazing tactic for increasing the number of people who like them on Facebook. Namely, plagiarizing the work of someone else.

Essentially, a few years back Monica Gaudio published some apple pie recipes on a blog that specializes in medieval cooking. Recently, Cooks Source republished the article word for word without permission.

Gizmodo has the whole story right here, but my favorite part is the email that Gaudio allegedly received from Cooks Source managing editor Judith Griggs:

But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn’t "lift" your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence [sic] and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally.

Which is just plain wrong.

Since this story started appearing around the Internet, the Cooks Source Magazine Facebook page has been inundated with comments from people critiquing their ethics and their interpretation of copyright laws (full disclosure: I ended up liking them specifically so I could leave snarky comment on their page). From watching the page, it looks like they’re averaging several posts a minute right now.

Clever ploy to get fans? Or just sheer bone headedness?

For a couple months, I’ve had a love-hate (Like/Unlike?) relationship with the increasingly ubiquitous Facebook “Like” button.  On one hand, I love the idea of it but, even at the most basic level, it raises some simple English language problems. For example, when I’m talking to someone about a film and they tell me, “Oh, I liked that yesterday,” my instant reaction is, “Well, what about today?” Beyond basic usage, though, there’s also been some questions about who precisely uses the Like button and what value, if any, it has.

Well, those questions are now being answered and the information is amazing, even for folks that don’t have a data fetish like me. In a post made by the media analytics leader for the Facebook Developer Network Insights team, Facebook quotes hard numbers showing increased user engagement, increased page views, increased referral traffic through the use of the Like button. For a sample of what they’re saying, all you have to do is look to the left.

According to them, your average “liker” is 34 years old, possesses 2.4 times the amount of friends as a typical Facebook user (312, by my estimate), and clicks on links on Facebook more than five times as often. If you look at some of the internal data the Facebook has release, the age bands most likely to share are between 25 and 44, with significant drop off occurring at 55 and above.

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Last week, the writers behind Syfy’s Eureka went public on their blog about a bizarre hostage situation that had been going on in their office. Between random notes glued together with letters cut from magazines and threats of teddy bear torture, the Eureka staff managed to craft together a nearly perfect post illuminating the kind of corporate culture they have in their office.

As with many such situations, this one began with a puzzle – literally. See, the Eureka writers had taken to doing jigsaw puzzles when they needed to think about something else besides writing. While attempting a particularly daunting 1,500 piece map of the night sky, they discovered that a key piece, part of the galactic equator, had been kidnapped. This set in motion a sordid tale that involves both sides taking hostages – on one side, the aforementioned puzzle piece. On the other, two teddy bears that were blindfolded and threatened with execution unless the piece was returned.

The whole thing is documented on their blog, complete with pictures of the escalating ransom notes, and it’s worth a read, if only for a laugh. What I find most entertaining about this, though, is that it makes a pretty clear statement about their office culture without ever specifically talking about it.

Many people distrust declaratory statements about a company’s culture made by the company itself and, as it turns out, with good reason. According to much academic research, people tend to be pretty bad self-evaluators, often being more forgiving in their assessments of their own personalities. Discrepancies between self-perception and others’ perceptions are nothing new and psychological research has been discussing this for almost half a century. There’s even research specifically on self-presentational theory (that is, how we talk about ourselves) that suggests we present ourselves in ways designed to create a favorable impression and avoid looking foolish or inconsistent.

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