If you’re disgruntled with your Facebook page, you’re not alone. The story goes something like this. Cheryl starts a Facebook page for her business. She requests all of her friends and family like the page. She links to it from her blog and email newsletters. She plunks down a few hundred dollars to pick up more fans with ads. Then, she decides to email them all, or do a report to see how many of her existing customers are fans. Then it hits her…

If you have a Facebook page with more than 500 fans,
there is no way to know who they are.

Background

A couple years ago, I coded up a script that would export up to 10,000 Facebook fans to a CSV file. I couldn’t get email addresses, but I could get photos, names and profile links. Facebook has now made that impossible. Now, all you can do is see 500 of your fans through your admin page.

This is a real problem for small companies and giant brands alike. Many companies spend thousands of dollars each month advertising to fans on Facebook. Through the course of multiple versions of the script, I’ve corresponded with people about how they use their Facebook page, why they need to get their fans out, and what other problems they have.

What Facebook page owners want

1. Reward a random fan

“We’re a small business looking to download our list of fans so that we can make a ‘true’ random selection of our users for contests.”

It is surprising that most page owners simply want to do a contest or raffle to select one page fan. Discovering this, I did a little bit of research and found it is against Facebook’s terms of service to pick a random fan. To be honest, the regulations around contests are really confusing.

It seems most people either use a Facebook event to build a list of entrants, or an app to manage their contests (which is different from just selecting a random fan). Several people are using random.org’s third-party draw service which is integrated with Facebook events. One draw for 100K fans costs $249.

2. Know who the fans are

“I’m from Chile and I own a .com business with a great number of visitors, so it would be very interesting to know who these people are and see their profile in order to improve our service and offers.”

Facebook’s latest demographic tools let you get a pretty good idea of how your fans are distributed demographically. You can now also target updates based on location and language. This technically should take care of the requirement to understand your fan. However, it is not as useful as being able to see each person and click through to their profile.

3. Get fans’ email addresses

“I have a Fan Page and would like to have just two pieces of data: Name and Email.

With this info, I would like to conduct an email campaign asking fans if they want to subscribe to my weekly newsletter.”

Not surprisingly many page owners want email addresses. Presumably this is to add them to an email list, or a customer database. Email is still the primary way to access customers, Facebook should make it easier for you to opt into giving your email address to a page owner, just as they do with apps.

If you’re a page owner there is no way to export or detect your fan’s emails. The only way to collect it is with a custom tab where you can ask the user to enter their email. It should be technically feasible to tie that email back to their Facebook profile, though I’m not sure if any tools out there do this.

I experimented with a few Facebook custom tab apps.

• Tabmaker has a very confusing user interface.
• Wildfire seems to be the most popular, and offers sweepstakes functionality.
• Venpop is simple and offers just the right features for free. I know the developers and sent video feedback.
• Lujure – another popular platform, I’ve met the founder and a lot of people love it.

There is a brand new Facebook feature that allows users to communicate with your page. If the user initiates, then you can respond. It would be a good idea to simply pin a post saying “message us with your email if you have any questions.” One app for managing this across multiple pages is contax.io.

4. Cross reference fans with a customer list or CRM.

“We’re trying to match FB profiles to profiles in our CRM via email address.”

When I first created my exporter, I wasn’t sure anyone would want it without the ability to get email. I quickly learned companies that have spent a lot of money advertising their page (or promoted it in an email campaign) want to know how many of their existing customers they’ve reached. Many times, name is sufficient to do the match (email is not required).

5. When did they become a fan?

“I work for the City of X, and we’re hosting a social media event to orient new students.  We’re giving away a Farmers Market gift certificate to students who like our page on the night of the event.”

One important piece of data that Facebook demographics leave out by not showing you who has fanned your page is who recently fanned your page. This is critical when organizing real-world events or ad campaigns.

If you’ve found solutions or workarounds to any of these problems, please leave a comment below. For updates on the Facebook exporter script, please sign up with your email at the top of this page.

Scott Berkun is a thoughtful and articulate person. I’ve enjoyed hearing him speak on the “myths of innovation,” and “getting useful design critiques.” I even met him last year at the airport waiting for my flight to SXSW. In just a couple minutes, he gave me excellent input for a panel I was preparing for about “the new work style.” One that stuck with me: All workers must produce something. And if they produce something, their location is irrelevant.

I’ve also been inspired by the way Scott has transformed himself from a UX designer at Microsoft to a best selling author and speaker. So, it was a no-brainer to pick up his book Mindfire: Big ideas for curious minds. Scott self-printed the book (well, I mean printed it via Amazon…). In a future post I hope to interview him on how he promoted it.

I’m about to turn 40, and Mindfire reinforces many of the insights I’ve had the past couple of years. On motivation and attention Scott writes:

Reclaiming attention starts with a leap of faith in believing the following sentence: you do not need more than what you have. When you survive that leap, which you will, it’s easy to convince yourself that you need less of the attention consuming things in your life than you currently have. You’ll soon find that every important ambition for your life is best served by treating your attention with the conservation it deserves. Instead of splitting your mind to keep busy, move your body to somewhere worthy of all the attention you have.

It drives me crazy to see Americans with every advantage not making the most of their lives. I believe many of us are self limited, or settle too soon. It is our responsibility to keep challenging ourselves, which by definition requires making ourselves uncomfortable regularly.

A funny thing about the human mind is it tends to believe what it wants to believe. We allow what we want to have happen distort our reasoning on how likely it is to happen, so we obsess about things that scare us, even if they are unlikely. We worry about snakes, or getting on airplanes, when the real threats to longevity are cheeseburgers, chocolate shakes and long hours lounging on the couch.

It is funny how we feel like we need to be consistent in our beliefs somehow. I have an old friend that always likes to remind me I was once a vegetarian (and use a PC instead of a Mac). Of course, it is good to stick to your morals. But if you can’t get good at assimilating new information, you’re screwed.

If you have kept the same beliefs and theories your entire life, then you haven’t been paying attention. To be wiser, smarter, and more experienced than you were a decade ago means you’ve changed. It’s good to think differently about life than you did before; it’s a sign future progress is possible.

Having aligned my attention and suspended disbelief, I’m also practicing being realistic in my commitments.

The phrase “I don’t have time for” should never be said. We all get the same amount of time every day. If you can’t do something, it’s not about the quantity of time. It’s really about how important the task is to you.

Paradoxically, I’ve found that prioritizing my time to follow my ambitions leads to more opportunities to live in the moment. Those moments are the most meaningful in life.

[In the western workplace,] success demands indifference to the wonders of the real, or the magic of the ridiculous… people living their passions, like street musicians, chefs, or craftsmen, are people who are not indifferent. They are fully present, and give us a chance to join them in the moment, but only if we stop to listen.

I talk about how the fuelband tracks cycling, and exactly how much “fuel” it awards for running, biking, pushup, and sit-ups.

Full size Nike+ fuelband review graph image

Here are a few products and pages I’ve been snorkeling on the last few weeks.

Social Media Marketing Class – I like Dan Martell and have a similar passion for guerrilla marketing hacks.

Time Crunched Cyclist – I’m building spreadsheets and ripping out pages to make sure I follow the training plan this year.

Warby Parker Glasses – Got two pairs and love them.

BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits – Established 3 new habits in one week. Saying good morning, flossing my teeth, and staying on top of my todos.

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (Updated 2012) – Rand Fishkin is the SEO authority. Stay up to date with what he says to do.

AdSense Flippers Archive OK, this is one I haven’t delved into yet, but I listen closely to the recomendations of the Lifestyle business podcast dudes.

Outbrain – I’m experimenting with it on this blog, will let you know the results.

Sean Malarkey interview. Here he reveals the tools he used in a recent $500K launch. Awesome of him to share the guts of his operation.

Nike+ Fuelband – Quantified self goes mainstream.

Last week, I discovered The Rise of Developeronomics via Brad Feld. As long as I’ve lived, it has always been a great time to be a software developer. The economics keep getting better for us. My favorite quote:

The one absolutely solid place to store your capital today — if you know how to do it –  is in software developers’ wallets. If the world survives looming financial apocalypse dangers at all, this is the one investment that will weather the storms. It doesn’t matter whether you are an individual or a corporation, or what corner of the world you inhabit. You need to find a way to invest in software developers.

The article also introduced me to the concept of a “10x developer,” and linked to a thoughtful explanation.

The 10x effect is the anecdotal observation that great programmers aren’t just a little more productive than average ones (like 15-20%). They tend to be 10 times more productive.

The second blog post is a fascinating analysis of 10x engineering in terms of thrust (high value flow state work) and drag (administrative necessities).

All this got me thinking, what do I do that makes me a 10x developer? I quizzed Ben Sharpe, Collin Watson, and Jonathan Locke, author of Coding – On Software Design Process. Here is what we came up with.

1. Only do the work that needs to be done. Use the agile process. Involve yourself in UX design. Communicate first. Coding might not be the solution. Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Choose the simplest solution that solves the problem.

2. Build on the shoulders of giants. Use open source frameworks. Use shorthand languages (HAML, Jade, Coffeescript) to go faster. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Leverage package managers for public and private code distribution. Don’t be at the mercy of Central Command (i.e. Microsoft) to fix a bug in a library. And don’t wait for your employer to let you learn it. Learn it on your own, and get a new job that pays twice as much.

3. Know your data structures and algorithms. Our profession is open to self taught tradesmen, but you can’t be a 10x developer if you don’t know when to use quick sort, identify an O(n2) routine, or write a recursive function. Be multilingual – so you can see how different frameworks solve the same problems over and over again. Know enough about the plumbing to be able to make informed decisions (how is this Web framework storing the session state? What is a cookie actually).

4. Don’t be afraid of buying tools that save you time.  Ben says: “I bought a bitmap font tool yesterday for $50. It easily saved me more than $200 of my time.”

5. Find focus. Don’t keep your email open all day. Same for Twitter, Facebook, HackerNews, and Techememe.  Minimize interruptions during productive moments.  Close email, turn off chat, put headphones on… whatever it takes to not be interrupted. Tiny hack:  I wear headphones at work even though I don’t listen to music because people don’t interrupt me.

6. Refactor early and often. Kill your darlings.  Sometimes you have to throw out clever code to do what’s right by the project, but that’s OK. If you have to touch code on an existing project, always leave it better than you found it.

7. Just do it. Think small. Do your weekend project, participate in Startup Weekend. I bought a Mac and worked in a Windows Virtual Machine on .NET projects for a year before I was able to fully leap to Unix and Ruby on Rails.

There are 3 more tips below. Click one of the sharing buttons to reveal tips 8, 9, and 10..

After years of bike commuting, the drive train on my 15 year old mountain bike (circa 1990s GT Backwoods) is starting to skip. I asked my biker friends on Facebook to recommend the ultimate urban commuter bike.

My criteria: Lightweight, geared for hills, low maintenance. My budget is only around $1,000. I don’t want something custom, just something practical. Ideally, also stylish with fenders and and a rack.

From Johnson Donglecorn: I recommend any internally geared hub, I like Rohloff. I also recommend a steel frame. I’d find an older (2000ish) Lemond. They use really nice Reynolds tubing (853 for example). Buy an IGH built up wheelset, and build the rest from your spare parts bin. Also,  I really wanted a Civia Bryant when i test rode one for fun.

Scott Nonnenberg: I’ll try to be the zen perspective here. First, decide your minimum requirements. Then, spend as little time as possible finding one that achieves those things and be done. You’ll be overwhelmed and/or led astray by the market’s focus on differentiators and not the core things that matter to you. I didn’t fully do this, but I did just go to REI and bought one that rode well and was reasonably cheap ($600 – Scott SUB 30).

The principle is taken from this article in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. Take a look at my note summarizing it.

With regard to the bike,  musts haves are: disc brakes, rack, fenders. Nice to have: wider tires to make the bike more versatile, internal hubs or other drive train changes to reduce maintenance costs. Solely my opinion: Mountain bike style handlebars will help with maneuverability, and you want enough gears to reduce sweating while riding.

Matt Terich: There are a lot of stock commuter bikes that are decent and stylish with internal hubs. Public and Linus come to mind. Very affordable. For commuting, albatross bars would be better than flat.

Eric Artzt: I have been riding a Rawland with an SRAM 3-speed internal / rear derailleur combo. Although the above is awesome, in retrospect given cost and weight considerations, if I had do-agains, I would go with a real derailleur and no front derailleur. I would definitely go for disc brakes and a rack/fender compatible frame. Additionally, get the bolt-on wheel skewers — basically, you want to be able to u-lock the thing with one of the compact locks, without worrying about parts being removed. There are some incredible deals right now on off-the-shelf disc based commuter bikes. It’s a bit hard to justify going fully custom.

I can’t wait to read Scott’s journal article above. I think about this kind of “maximization vs. satisfaction” stuff a lot.

 Scott Neilson: If I was replacing my 50lb Dutch wonder, I, Like Johnson above, would take a hard look at a Civia Bryant. My friend Matt is very happy with his Salsa Vaya too.  Unfortunately, those are both well over the $1k budget. You could join the hordes of Surly folks and get a Disc Trucker or, like Matt says, go the Linus route. My friend Clarke (a serious cyclist and aesthete) is very happy with his Linus Roadster, I just wish it had discs.

 Matt Leber Go test ride the Civia Cycles Bryant at Counter Balance Bicycles near U Village. It’s a little above your budget but is a nice bike. While a Rohloff hub would be nice, the hub alone is your entire budget. The Alfine on that Bryant should do the trick. The belt drive should be virtually maintenance free. I’d comment more but I’m off to go clean my chains on 2 bikes.
 Jason Morris I think internal gear hubs feel like your pedaling in sand. There’s a higher transmission friction loss than a chain drive. Unless you’re just cruising on the boardwalk, you’ll feel it.
Scott Neilson I hadn’t heard that about planetary hubs before. I’ve been very happy with the Nexus 8-speed that’s on my Jorg & Olif Dutch bike but, of course, a little friction would be hard to discern while riding around town on 50lbs of the early machine age. Here’s a good review of the Civia bryant which is my top vote for Adam’s dream commuter.

Summary

The Scott SUB 30 was kind of what I had in mind. However, I’m going to try and find a Bryant for a test ride. Drive train maintenance is always what ends up stopping me from riding. I think I would prefer flat bars for commuting, but we’ll see. Oh, with regards to Scott & Eric’s comments on consumer psychology, I’m definitely a “satisfier” (not a maximizer)!

Traditional marketing is interruption marketing. These days, it is much more effective if you can earn a customer’s interest (as opposed to forcing them to look at your advertisement). This is called inbound marketing. In a recent presentation, Rand Fishkin from Seattle SEO company SEOMoz hadsome great tips on on successful inbound marketing. Here are the notes I took.

There are 3 more great hacks below click one of the sharing buttons to reveal tips 8, 9, and 10 (text will appear instantly).

Since today is “black friday” – here are my picks for this year. I’m not officially asking santa for these, and I don’t make any money if you buy one. I just think they’re cool!

Here are my notes from yesterday’s HIVE conference presented by AIGA’s Seattle chapter. This is the first design conference that I’ve attended. I enjoyed the emphasis on design. This is a bit of a brain dump, I apologize that I did not take the time to write a shorter post.