In an excellent blog post this week, Brian Solis outlined his predictions for the role of a marketer in 2010. Out of eight high-level points, he made four that seemed particularly relevant to the building of strategy in a campaign:

- Listen to and engage customers one to one

- Build relationships and not campaigns

- Create experiences not impressions

- Earn media and not buy it

What he's talking about here is a set of things I hear often. Listening. Engagement. Relationships. Experiences. I'd lump these under "feelings", something that doesn't mesh well with the traditional concept of measurement and ROI.

Measuring Intangibles

Just yesterday, Facebook rolled out some changes to Fan Pages that give a helpful boost to our effort to measure these intangible feelings. Fan Page administrators will now be able to get numbers on impressions for status updates. This means that we can gauge how many people see the information placed on a page through their own news stream; it no longer requires a user to come directly to the page.

Facebook also gives us a handy impressions-to-interactions ratio which shows up as a feedback percentage.

What does this mean?

As astutely noted by our own Wendy Hofstetter, this relatively simple change could have some big impact:

- Reporting numbers on Facebook will be more accurate than the standard "pageviews" statistics previously provided.

- We can more easily compare the return on Facebook versus other more traditional media by calculating a CPM (cost-per-thousand). Most companies use CPM as a way to gauge how expensive their advertising is (that's how TV, outdoor, Radio, Magazines, etc. are purchased).

- We can begin testing what time of day is best for Facebook engagement.

- We can understand what kinds of posts (videos, quotes, etc.) get the most engagement.

Why is this important?

Brian Solis had another point in that list: Look beyond the quantity of friends, page visits, eyeballs, readers, and viewers to measure changes in consumer attitude and intent.

Facebook allows brands to create meaningful interactions with consumers. At Room 214, Facebook allows us to keep our clients' fans updated with relevant information and content that the fans wouldn't necessarily find otherwise. We can solicit feedback, engage in direct conversation and create content that, if worthy, can be shared over and over again by interested parties.

That being said, a bottom line is a bottom line. Our clients need to understand how their money is being used. And we need to continue to interact with consumers in ways that produce repeat engagement, support, sharing, and evangelism. This new feature from Facebook gets us closer to creating relationships that we can quantify. It also helps us better understand what content isn't interesting; we can then refine our strategy and provide our loyal fans with things they'd prefer to hear, see and discuss.

After taking a look at the profile images on all seven of the Travel Channel Facebook pages, I realized that there was a way for us to improve the look and feel of our pages. Take a look at a few of the profile images that were displayed at the time:

There were a few issues with each profile image:

1. The formatting was inconsistent.
2. The use of Travel Channel's logo and brand style was inconsistent.
3. There was room for the images to look cleaner and more official.

Why is the profile image so important?

A profile image is the most used part of any Facebook page. It is the biggest and most noticeable design element when a fan is viewing your page, and it is also appears in the news stream of every one of your fans. If you have an active fan-base on Facebook (like Travel Channel has), there are tens-of-thousands of fans who see this image everyday.

See how I improved our profile images after the break:

Your profile image can send unintended messages (negative and positive) about your brand. When you are exposing yourself to thousands of people in social media everyday, it is important present yourself in the best way possible (In other words: look official).

I took it upon myself to create a new design and I kept a few goals in mind along the way:

1. Create consistent messaging and formatting.
2. Be consistent with the use of Travel Channel's brand styling.
3. Improve the overall look and feel of the images.

Here is the final result:

In the new design, each profile image uses the Travel Channel logo and brand styling in the exact same way. they help to reduce confusion on the user's part since the new formatting places the same information in the same place on every image. Overall, the new design is also more sleek and much easier on the eyes.

The old profile images may have been sending an unintended negative message about Travel Channel. Now, every time a fan visits one of the pages it looks and feels like an official representation of the Travel Channel brand.

What did we learn in the process?

Every move you make in social media sends both intended and unintended messages to your audience. This applies just as much to the design of your profile as it does to the content you post on your profile.

Social media users have been in the communities longer than you, and they can point out a faker or a new-comer quite easily. You have to prove to this audience that you understand the medium.

What is realtime web?

The early adopter crowd has been joining in the choir filling our ears with realtime web, an way to get instant feedback and encourage participation in web applications. Not so long ago, all content on the web was old, research papers, thought out articles. When you searched, what you looked for was most relevant, tested information.

Boy, how things change, now its all about instant feedback. With tremendous adaptation of smartphones by everyone from heavyweight business users to teenagers, mobile access and easy publishing of geo/event-enabled information is more accessible than ever.

Enter Buzz Room, a way to follow live conversations and start your own. It's Room 214's premiere product to answer ever-growing need to attract the realtime web crowd.

What does Buzz Room do?

Buzz Room is a social network enabled chat room with provided commentary from keyword-based twitter feeds as well as facebook pages. In addition to pulling very relevant information from top realtime sources, it gives our clients full customization of the front end, keywords, banning of users, in-stream and in-app advertising, metrics and just a slew of other, awesome features which are in constant development.

It also allows us pull in special twitter users such as presenters or subject experts into its own tab as well as give them a premiere spot in the main stream. This allows for greater interaction as well as more relevant conversation.

Why Buzz Room?

We saw a need for a fully customizable app that our clients can drop into their web properties or large conference screens and it would seamlessly

blend in with the environment. Also as mentioned earlier, realtime web is a rapidly growing portion of the web that has seen limited adoption as a tool to drive conversation, and as pioneers in social media we saw the need to provide a marketable solution in that field. Lastly we wanted to capture the conversation and consolidate all the buzz inside one room (I can't even count the number of puns in that last sentence).

How does it work?

As some of you may know but I am one of three developers here at Room 214, other 2 being Dominic and Joe. We also just hired a full time designer, Andy, due enormous amount of need for creative work. One of the biggest things we recognized this year is the ever-growing need to have a development team inside the agency, because there is just so much opportunity to build awesome things. Every day a new API is released, new way to engage the audience is discovered and to make sense of it all, we want to create tools and apps help our clients achieve success.

Buzz Room uses Twitter OAuth to login into your twitter account so we can post on your behalf and Facebook Connect so we can do the same with facebook. This also allows us to provide very detailed usage statistics to our clients.

We also pull in Twitter keyword stream via very powerful search APIs, grab specified special users as well as pull in chatter from specified Facebook Pages. What this does is helps us fill the room with relevant, real-time content.

Check it out

You can see Buzz Room in action over at Lifetime's Project Runway page. With this and other exciting new apps we are constantly cranking out, I have no doubt this isn't the last time you hear from our development team.

The Task
Take our existing Facebook pages for Travel Channel and make them more viral, more informative, more interactive, and more targeted.

How We Did It
In order to make the Travel Channel pages more viral, we took advantage of the sharing functionality accessible through Facebook's API. We built a unique left-hand sidebar for every featured tab, which enables visitors to share specific content with their friends. We also included share buttons on video and blog posts to allow users more flexibility when suggesting content.

We made these pages more informative by featuring content frequently requested by fans. In this case, that content was episode information for each show. We created a custom tab with information on when an episode would air and provided links back to TravelChannel.com for pictures, travel guides, and episode descriptions.

The pages became more interactive through our custom polling application. If you use Facebook, you know how popular polling is within the system. We took this concept and created a tab where users can tell us what they think about recent episodes. This application also provides Travel Channel with a way to gather feedback quickly from viewers.

Finally, we strategized to make Travel Channel's pages more targeted. Brands are all about gaining new fans on Facebook, but they often neglect to tell users why to become a fan. We solved this problem by creating a landing page where all non-fans would land. This tab includes a welcome message, an overview with information about the show, and a call-to-action suggesting they become a fan of the page.

The Results
It's all about meeting business objectives, so here are the results of the re-design. In addition to the four objectives I listed above, our goal was to increase traffic back to TravelChannel.com. Within one month after re-designing their show pages, traffic has increased significantly and Facebook has become a top-referring source for the site.

Do you have a Facebook success story? I'd love to hear about it!

I am rather excited about this Facebook/FriendFeed situation. Why? I think the FriendFeed team can really improve Facebook.

Lately, Facebook has seemed to be in a transition phase (half stuck between becoming a Twitter competitor and sticking to their roots). While it is hard to say what sort of functionality they are aiming for at Facebook., they are certainly giving us a look at the future.

FriendFeed brings a lot of brain power into the mix. Now that Facebook has acquired the know-how, there are a lot of things they can be doing to improve my experience.

Include a real-time search of status messages.

Facebook needs to become more open. I want to search status messages and see what people are talking about up to the minute. This is a no-brainer.

Be my one-stop internet identity.

This means Facebook has to adopt the aggregation qualities of FriendFeed. I want to be able to connect my Facebook with my FriendFeed, my blog, and my Brightkite. I don't necessarily want to publish posts from all of those networks, but I want Facebook to recognize all of those networks as me. If someone connects with me on one network, I would like for them to be able to visit my Facebook profile and get a more complete sense of the person I am.

I want to easily link/mention my friend's profiles in my posts.

There is no easy way to reference a friend in a status update on Facebook. On Twitter this is as easy at including someone's handle. I would like to be able to type a friend's name and have it appear as a link to his profile in my status update. Even better, if Facebook would allow us to aggregate our profiles from other networks we could easily use a Twitter handle or another username to mention each other in posts. Those links could all head to our Facebook profile pages, making them much more useful and relevant.

Make Facebook less messy.

Here is where the FriendFeed team can really make improvements. In Facebook, there are so many different places to interact with other users that it gets confusing. I think it reduces the amount of quality interaction.

Let's say you see Dave's status and you want to respond. You can:

1. Post a comment on his status message, but risk the annoyance of getting notifications every time a user you don't know also comments on that status update.
2. Head to Dave's profile so you can comment on his wall.
3. Start a chat with Dave to continue the discussion
4. Send Dave a mail message

Let say you choose to post on Dave's wall and now he sees your wall post. He can:

1. Comment you back on the post you put on his wall
2. Head to your profile and post his response on your wall
3. Start a chat with you
4. Send you a mail message

Now lets say Dave is a total noob (which is the case for a lot of Facebook users). He accidentally posts his response in another status update. All of a sudden this conversation has gone from a status update, to one person's wall, to the next person's wall, back to a status update. Needless to say, the entire process has a lot of room to be simplified.

There are things I like about both sites, and by taking the strengths of both FF and FB, perhaps they can mash together a new social media super-power.

What do I like about Facebook?

Facebook is where I can find most of the people I know personally. It is less scary and more acceptable to a wide range of users because you generally connect with more people that you know in real-life. This is partially why they have been acquiring so many new users. The problem is: Facebook has not entirely kept up with the way people communicate and connect, leaving them with one foot in the past, one foot in the future, and an interface that is equally as stuck in-between.

What do I like about FriendFeed?

All of my internet identities are pulled into one convenient location that is very intuitive and easy to use. The problem is: The average user doesn't know as many people on FriendFeed and is less inclined to spend time there, even though the interface is way better.

I tend to let vanity get the best of me when it comes to my social networks. This has earned me a respectable amount of Facebook friends (about 550 or so).

What do I get in return for clicking accept on those friend requests? A Facebook feed full of pure un-adulterated garbage. Every day I get annoyed with the rubbish that continues to appear in my Facebook feed. I may even venture to say I get upset.

Why? Because I have to spend 10 minutes a day blocking ridiculous quizes, un-tagging myself in chain letters, or declining invites to apps that I don't want spamming up my feed.

So today, out of frustration, I asked myself, "what are these people doing?"

Why do they not find all of this irritating? Why must I constantly be blocking "Which Sex in the City character are you" quizes?

Then I came upon the answer: They are bored. Purely and simply, they have nothing better to do with their time. They come to Facebook because they are bored and they want to be entertained. I, therefore, should not be getting worked up about my Facebook feed.

While working in social media it is easy to get too serious. At least twice a day I see a link to a blog post about "The 7 Deadly Sins in Social Media," or "57 No-No's on Twitter." In our world, it is important to come off as professional and ahead of the curve.

However, we need to keep our audience in mind. While Facebook is a great place to network and re-connect, most people go there everyday because they are bored and Facebook is entertaining.

Before you get completely caught up in following all the rules, keep in mind that most people use social sites to be entertained. If you are not engaging or entertaining, most people won't pay much attention.

In this podcast, we discuss:

1. To follow or not to follow: Acceptable twitter manners - great people in person doesn't always transfer to great people on Twitter.

2. Advantages of Facebook vs Twitter: Facebook throttles down notifications, meaning you won't receive constant updates from a person on Facebook, even if they are posting 20 items an hour.

3. A day in the life of Jeremy Tanner: It starts with his iphone (of course)

4. Bridging the gap between online and offline communications: It's about keeping two-way conversations. Also, don't forget or be afraid to pick up the phone.

Be sure to check out Jeremy at http://www.jeremytanner.com, and follow him via twitter at http://twitter.com/penguin

The challenge seems like a fun way to instill a sense of camaraderie among coworkers, as they face a rival team to secure honor and bragging rights. However, the fun came to an end when the legal and PR reps from Facebook refused to allow their employees to participate. I suppose it's understandable that having all of your employees get drunk while playing a frat game can evoke may horrific visions of PR backlash or DUIs, but at what cost? I've seen numerous articles appear recently that suggest that Generation Y, the younger generation on the brink of joining the workforce, values fun in a workplace. This is a generation that refuses to believe that work should define you, and should instead be a fun environment to earn enough money to do fun activities in their time off. To be a company based on a website that was initially only open to young people still in school, it would seem that refusing to allow a fun group activity is not the way to gain points with a large part of your target market.

Companies now more than ever must evaluate their image and decide if they want to market the "fun environment" or the "traditional environment". Time will tell if the word corporate will change to encompass a more laid-back atmosphere, but I can tell you that I personally prefer the former. I'm admittedly not much of a beer drinker, but it's great when you can create a team environment where your employees truly enjoy coming to work and collaborating with their coworkers. These types of bonds can often be strengthened by activities such as the forbidden beer pong. The answer doesn't have to be drinking based, but if the employees are excited at the prospect of battling another company (not unlike the company sponsored softball teams of yore), then perhaps the PR reps should more carefully weigh the risk vs. benefits. Your employees might not be driving while intoxicated now (which is of course always a good thing!), but the news that your company frowns on fun is now making the rounds all over the internet, and might be taken into consideration by people who might want to use your product or apply for a job in your company.

Facebook is still a great way to connect and share information. Not only does your profile inherently have a high "trust" rating in Google, but it can also serve as a highly custom landing page for you or your company. Here are a few tips to keep your profile professional and up to date without ever touching it. The hardest part of this process is keeping it personal enough to share your interests while keeping it interesting to the people that do not know you.

1. Have means to contact you easily accessible on the top. Out of Instant Messaging, Phone or Email or website URLs you should provide at least one. Listing multiple ways to contact you is obviously the best. The websites you list will be getting very tasty Facebook flavored link juice, which always helps. At the same time, do not use it purely for your corporate contacts, keep in mind that facebook is for connecting outside work, so listing interests and personal you-and-your-dog websites is very much encouraged.

2. Use apps that link into your other social profiles. Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google Shared Feeds and even just rss blog feed all can be integrated without being too spammy, and will always keep the content on your page fresh and current. Most of the apps I linked for your convenience, to import your rss feed, just go to the official Notes application and click on "import your own blog" link at the bottom. If you do a lot of stumbling, tagging through delicious or sharing items in google reader make sure to disable them from updating mini feed otherwise they will overwhelm it and your friends would probably not be very happy with you.

3. Finally, use Facebook for its intended purpose. There are plenty of ways to deal with the never ending stream of "Just for Fun" app spam, and one of them is just to power through. Organize events, be active in groups, constantly be on lookout for people you know, and stay in touch with your current friends. You never know when or who will bring you a new client or provide a new business opportunity.

While there can be advantages to outsourcing your online persona in this manner, there can be possible disadvantages as well. As someone creating an online presence, you should be sure that you understand what you want to use your personal site for (if indeed you even choose to have one amid the sea of social networking sites). Social sites often let you create a profile where you provide links to personal sites--these can help drive traffic to your personal page. Likewise, providing links to these social sites on your personal page can drive traffic to these external representations of you.

Ultimately, these two types of sites--personal and social--can balance each other out and drive more traffic and attention to you than you might otherwise have experienced if you were to forgo one of the options. However, the more you outsource, the more potential for less traffic to your personal site, and if this is where you house the most important content, you might see smaller readership.

You might also want to consider the implications of giving up direct control of the hosting of your content and what it means if these external sites were to change their policies or suffer a major outage. The more sites you sign up for, the more you have to keep up with in terms of updating, which might be cumbersome depending on how many social sites you use.

A reader in the comments of this blog entry did make a good point though in stating that giving out a personal URL somehow doesn't have the same weight that it used to. In a time where virtually everyone has their own Myspace or Facebook account, people want like to respond with like. For the average person, these social sites are sufficient--there is no need to bother with HTML and creating a custom site. It's also that much more effort to remember a personal URL than it is to know that you can look someone up later on Facebook and friend them.

Is there a need for an average person to have a personal site anymore, or is it completely redundant when the info can be found on multiple social networking sites? Should one keep all content in-house, or outsource it to other sites such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Youtube, etc.? I for one have not formulated a definite answer to these questions, but I would love to hear any opinions on the matter!

While people with more common names will have a harder time ranking for your own name as the first result, the tips below are helpful to everyone. First and foremost it is important to not be afraid to use your name on social websites. As Gary Vaynerchuk pointed out, your legacy, which starts with the name, is more important than money (currency) you currently make. You are your own brand in Social Media and New Media Marketing, so to rank high for your name on search engines you must not be afraid to use your name.

There is 2 main ways to get this accomplished. First goal is to get your profile and your name on as many high trust sites as possible, here is a list of must-haves:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pownce
• Flickr
• Digg

The big thing about these sites is they all allow you to link 1 or more sites, Pownce, Digg and LinkedIn being the best about cross linking your websites.

Second way to get the site ranked for your name is to simply comment on blog posts you find interesting. Best way to provide an insightful comment is to ask a question related to the post to initiate conversation. Check our our tutorial on how to post a blog comment. If you have troubles finding interesting blog posts, I suggest you check out reddit, digg or stumbleUpon, across those 3 sites, you have unlimited amount of fresh interesting content to read and ultimately comment on.

Keeping those 2 tips in mind, you should have no problem getting even the toughest names ranked well on search engines. If you have any other suggestions, please let us know in the comments. We would love to hear how those tips help you rank well for your own name.

My favorite recent story that I came across was on Wired.com. There I found an article about "Canada's dumbest car thief." This individual took a tricked-out car for a test drive, only to never return. The owner of the dealership, an internet-savvy 20-something, went straight to the automotive discussion forum Beyond.ca and posted a description of the vehicle and the suspect.

What started as a mere post on a forum branched out and used many other online tools such as Facebook and Google Maps to discover the suspect's name, address, and other personally identifying information. Since the thief kept the car parked in front of his own house, the dealership owner knew exactly where to send police, and made sure to be there to tape the arrest and post it on YouTube--a fitting online ending to a crime solved thanks to the Internet.

While the Internet is a tool often used for entertainment or research, it also offers means to track down criminals for crimes that occurred offline. The resolution of these two different cases is just so cool that it shows how much the Internet has to offer when its powers are used for good!

At the risk of being smacked down again, another topic of interest (soon to be a week old, Stepan), is the Danny Sullivan interview with SEOmoz about Facebook marketing. It even inspired me to setup a facebook business page for Room 214. Say I'm late to the party with this as one who runs a search marketing agency, but hey, until I see the money for our clients - it's ALL in beta.

How cool it is to go through the process of setting up a pay per click advertising campaign in Facebook. I have 18 million people from which to target! My selections included people who are over 30, have a college degree, are interested in marketing and blogging, and work at Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and a few others. Uh-oh, with these parameters, facebook tells me I'm targeting 20 people.

I think "ouch" - then go to submit my credit card info in the name of bleeding edge marketing. What, you won't accept my AMEX company card? Bye for now Facebook.

Case in point: my 10 year high school reunion was set to happen this year. I was actually looking forward to attending--seeing what my fellow classmates have been up to, who is already successful, and who is still trying to find their way, that sort of thing. The reunion was set to happen earlier this month, but the event was cancelled at the end of October. The reason? The reunion company hired was unable to locate enough classmates.

I was not on the committee, but the organization of the reunion did not appear to have been handled in the best manner. A page just for the reunion was created on Myspace, and many of my classmates friended the profile, but this page was not really used to post or disseminate information. In fact, when the reunion was cancelled, it took weeks for them to post a list of "missing" classmates. When the list was finally posted, at least 1/4 of the people on this list were not only on Myspace, but also a friend of the reunion profile! How can these people be missing when they clearly have a way to be contacted, and have an interest in the reunion if they were a friend of the reunion profile? Just by simply typing in the classmate's name into Myspace, several of the "missing" people could have been found. In the case of those who friended the reunion profile, posting a message asking for contact info might have helped. Why was the list not posted earlier? People cannot provide information if they do not know it is needed--keeping people informed and up-to-date is key in planning events, and with all the bulletin and event features on these networking sites, there is no reason why people couldn't have been kept in the loop.

It just seemed like the committee and reunion company were waiting for the information to come to them, instead of using resources such as Classmates.com, Facebook, and Myspace. No reunion group was set up in Facebook that I was aware of, thus not taking advantage of this popular site either. While Facebook does not turn up as many graduates for my year as Myspace, there are still a few people on there who cannot be found on Myspace.

Adding to the frustration is the fact that, a few days ago, the Myspace profile was deleted, thus increasing the misutilization of this web tool. In the event that the committee tries to plan an 11 year reunion, they will have to try even harder to reach out to the class, since I doubt most people will be motivated now to actively seek out more information.

With the power of the internet allowing people to find information and locate lost friends more easily than ever, it seemed to me that something like a reunion should be a piece of cake to organize. Sadly, this was not the case, and now my class will probably not have one at all. It makes me wonder how on earth these events took place back in the days before technology--perhaps it is a sign that the traditional non-electronic methods are still effective. In reality though, the committee and/or company was probably hoping that everyone would somehow know where to submit their contact info and that there would be no need to search for anyone. While that certainly could have happened, the lack of announcements or notifications alerting people where they could find reunion details or submit their information made it nearly impossible for the "lost" people to be "found"--even those who were never truly lost to begin with.