Facebook’s New Ad Creation Interface: Facebook has made some updates to the popular ad creations interface. Age Targeting has changed, you can now target ads to as young as age 13. When you create an ad or sponsored story, instead of choosing a particular Facebook advertising program, all you’ll need to do to get started is answer a few questions about what you want to promote and your objectives. Also, if you are promoting a Page, app, or event you can enter its name in the field marked Destination. Once you’ve selected your destination, you’ll then see other options about what you want to promote, and what you want people to see when they view your ad or sponsored story.

Cadbury’s Approach to Google+: ”Cadbury has put significant creative muscle into Google+ efforts, with buzzworthy events such as recreating its page entirely out of chocolate to celebrate hitting the 500K fan mark and unveiling a new candy bar on the platform.” A great article on how Cadbury has built a following of 1 million+ on Google Plus.

Wrap Bribes Visitors For Data: How much is your personal data worth? Wrapp will give you a $5 gift card for access to your personal data… and people are taking the offer.

Kraft’s Likeapella Video: Kraft made an a capella video to thank all 4,632 people for liking one of their Facebook posts, literally naming every single one of them.

Pinterest, a rapidly-growing social networking site, allows users to “pin” photos they find online on their own virtual boards. Each time an image is pinned on a board, it appears in a real time feed located on the site’s homepage. Users can follow each others’ boards and “re-pin” or “like” pins that show up on their feed.

If you want to maximize the potential to create a bigger buzz about your brand and drive traffic to your site, before you start creating boards and pins, take these steps to optimize your website for Pinterest.

1. Use high-quality, eye-catching photos. Users are more likely to “pin” and “re-pin” photos that are interesting or useful, so make sure that the images you feature on your site stand out. Include these photos each time you post new content on your website. Users create pins using images that link back to the original page an image is hosted on, so if you don’t include a photo in your latest blog post, it has no pinning potential.
2. Add a “Pin It” button. If you don’t have one already, add a “Pin It” button to your website so that users can easily share content they find interesting.
3. Make sure users can pin your images. Talk to your web developer and make sure that your website doesn’t render images in Flash; these images can’t be detected using the “pin it” bookmarklet, according to the Pinterest support team. The bookmarklet also can’t detect any images you feature on your Facebook page.
4. Use relevant keywords. While users are the ones who write descriptions for each pin they create, help them out by using significant, brand-related keywords on the page that your image is featured, in the image file name, and in the image description text. This way, pinners writing their own unique, catchy descriptions may also include keywords or #hashtags that relate to content they find on your site. If you’re not sure which words to use, check your analytics or use a keyword research tool to find out which ones already drive traffic to your website.
5. Are users already talking about you? Pinterest users may already be pinning images from your website. Pinterest is a huge resource for discovering popular content. To see how users are representing your brand on Pinterest, visit http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” (replace “yourdomain.com” with your company’s website).

Once you’ve optimized your website for Pinterest, grow your audience by identifying and following users and boards that are discussing your brand.

As a social media evangelist, the Conversation Prism became a disruptive tool that inspired both fear and opportunity. I leveraged it as the star slide of every presentation I gave over the next year – and also came to recognize a new thought leader in Solis, one who was articulating the future as well as the client experiences unfolding right in front of me.

I caught up with Solis recently to talk about his book, “The End of Business as Usual: Rewire The Way You Work to Succeed in the Customer Revolution.” The following are highlights from our conversation.

Jason Cormier: Was there any feedback or key learning’s you established from your last book, “Engage”, as a foundation for this new book?

Brian Solis: Yes. “Engage” was aimed at the social strategist, marketing and communications team, and progressive management teams that were ready to… just as the title instructs, engage.

Between the release of version 1 in March of 2010 and version 2 in March of 2011, I learned quite a bit about how organizations were or were not changing to adapt to market opportunities.

”The End of Business as Usual” is written for change agents and those fighting to compete for attention and relevance. This time, I’m also pursuing the executives who are responsible for leading their business to what’s next. And, this book makes the case for leadership teams to look beyond social media to see the impact of the connected customer on their business.

This isn’t a book about case studies on how to use Facebook or Twitter. Executives don’t use these networks so making the argument, while necessary, really was the role of “Engage”. This time, I make the case from a business level to demonstrate how running a rigid business, business as usual, will open the doors to digital Darwinism where companies that fail to adapt will become victims of natural selection.

JC: I saw Peter Guber called your new book “the map” to win the hearts and minds of customers with “new media experiences.” Do you dig into any of the practical and tactical here or would you say it’s more of a map as opposed to a set of directions?

BS: Interesting question. The book is broken into two halves. First, I make the case for the future of decision-making and how connected consumers are influencing and influenced by interest graphs (those individuals connected by keywords, shared relationships, and expressed interests).

The second half of the book focuses on how to build an adaptive organization that’s optimized to learn, engage, adapt, and lead. It’s part map and part step-by-step directions.

JC: I caught your interview with Radian6 CEO, Marcel Lebrun. In the context of “what’s next,” I like how he talked about the shift of how we must line up for our customers instead of the traditional mindset of how they line up for us.

He was using the idea of waiting on the phone in a support queue as an example, but was obviously referring to much more of an encompassing business concept – one he believes we’ll spend “the next 10 years” trying to figure out. What’s your take on his statements, and how might your book address them?

BS: The entire book is based upon the premise that businesses are stuck either reacting to customers or developing products or services in a vacuum that may or may not deliver against needs or aspirations. That’s business as usual and perhaps it will suffice for traditional consumers.

But for connected consumers, businesses have to focus beyond “figuring it out” to getting in front of customer experiences in order to shape and steer them. “The End of Business as Usual” looks at the “why” and also the “how” to help businesses rethink the infrastructure of the organization, the culture, processes, systems, methodologies, and decision trees to improve the internal collaboration needed to promote external collaboration.

You can’t engage externally if you can’t engage within. Employees, like customers, are stakeholders – and their support, input, and passion are critical ingredients in the recipe of tomorrow’s relevance.

JC: Over the years, you’ve referred to the “uh-oh” moment or “a-ha” moment as one that will ultimately lead companies into social media. What are the most common uh-oh moments you are seeing at this point in time?

BS: It’s amazing. Still today, businesses are thrust into social networks because of the “uh oh” moment. What’s even more amazing is that many businesses that are currently engaged in social media are also vulnerable to unsuspecting moments that blindside them into the new reality.

Businesses are not in control of customer experiences because they’re wrestling with the idea of what control really is. Broadcast marketing, screaming louder than consumers, buying media that tells people what to think, again, that’s business as usual.

Facebook currently houses 800 million active residents – that’s the size of the entire Internet in 2004. There’s no going back. Yet businesses today believe that they don’t need a social presence because that “might” invite negative interaction or operate social media in a silo while they wonder why they’re getting service related questions or complaints on a Facebook page dedicated to CSR activity.

JC: Shiv Singh said, “When it comes to digital marketing I believe marketers need to be more strategists & research minded than idea evaluators and implementers.” What’s the first thing that comes to mind regarding how your new book might help marketers (inside of brands or within agencies) best address the ever growing demand for strategy in social media?

BS: Shiv is right. If we examine many successful social media initiatives today, we’ll learn that great ideas connected with consumers to spark word of mouth, interaction, and desirable outcomes.

But in reality, this is yet another example of implementation. And, when you really think about it, there’s very little that’s truly social in everyday corporate social media campaigns. Sometimes I jokingly refer to social media as a great oxymoron.

One of the greatest advantages of social media is to listen to conversations to learn about mentions, context, sentiment, and reach. But when we really hear what people are saying and why, we start to peel back the layers of significance to research, learn, and adapt to new opportunities.

The insights that we extract simply by listening, hearing, and feeling what’s transpiring in social networks helps us translate empathy into action. The result is campaigns, service strategies, products, and so much more. By default, relevance is earned simply by reflecting customer behavior, wants, and opportunities. #AdaptorDie!

This is undoubtedly impressive, but what does this mean for your brand?  Should you be on Pinterest?

The short answer is yes.  Historically, most companies wait a little too long to dip their toes into a new social network to make sure that it’s going to last.  This leaves them playing catch up, and you don’t want to be late to this party.  At the very least you should secure your brand username before a squatter does.

The longer answer is maybe.  There are a few key considerations with how to allocate business resources that should always be considered before committing them to developing social media communities:

1.  Is your audience hanging out on this social network?

2.  Is your audience actively participating on this social network?

3.  What are your business goals that will be tied to your activities on this social network?

4.  What is your overall social media marketing strategy and how well does Pinterest fit in?

5.  Are “Pinners” already spreading your brand around Pinterest?  Type the following URL into your browser and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site: http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” to follow and identify “Pinners” and boards that your brand’s content is appearing on.

Lifestyle brands benefit the most from Pinterest.  Currently 97% of Pinterest’s 1 million+ Facebook fans are women.

The current Pinterest user base is 83% female; 30% of whom are 25-34 years old, and 25% of whom are 34-45 years old.  These women are well educated with over 60% having some college experience, 19% holding Bachelors degrees, and 6% holding Graduate degrees.  They are more likely to live in mid-west states with 35% living in households with incomes between $25,000-$49,999, 34% living in households with incomes between $50,000-$74,999, and 14% living in households with incomes between $75,000-$99,999.

Therefore, if this is your target audience and you aren’t on Pinterest, you should open a new tab on your browser and request an invite.  Yes, Pinterest has had the growth mentioned above as an invite-only website.

If this is not your target audience, consider how your products and services can become attractive and valuable to this active audience.  Think about the lifestyle benefits and attributes of what your company offers and how your customers use your products or services to enhance their lifestyles.  If you’re not sure where to start, there are dozens of resourceful articles that can steer you in the right direction.  It would be a shame to not connect with all of these people who are having fun, sharing pictures and videos, and driving traffic to retailers.

Social media marketing is deeply rooted in word of mouth. As social media folks (ie. gurus, specialists, slackjaws) we focus on a specific channel, but our end goal is the same: get people talking about our brands and our clients.

As we explain in the video above, effective WOM marketing follows five key principles:

• Credible – Honest and Authentic
• Respectful – Transparent and trustworthy behavior
• Social - Listening to, participating in, responding to and encouraging conversations
• Measurable - The ability to define, monitor and evaluate a program’s success
• Repeatable – The ability to deliver on these principles over and over again

If you like what you see in the video above, you can grab some free presentation slides, and information downloads below. It’s something visual and fun to include in your next presentation about WOM marketing.

WOMM Presentation Resources:

• Download principles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Download the Information Sheet
• Download the Powerpoint slides

“Getting into social” is now a mandatory part of the marketing program at most firms, but it’s frequently an execution, not a strategy. Would you ever send out a generic mailer to 100,000 with just your logo and company description to “generate awareness”? No. The act of creating a social presence must be tied directly back to your measurable business goals for the year. Check out this tutorial on aligning business goals with social objectives and write your own down. A few sample goals:

• Increase product penetration by X %
• Drive foot traffic in-store
• Increase customer service ratings

And a few sample objectives. Remember that objectives are NOT (!!!) executions:.

• Drive brand awareness among new customers
• Encourage brand loyalty and increase retention among existing customers
• Solve customer service issues
• Highlight and encourage positive product reviews

2. Have the right tools.

There are hundreds of social media tools out there, and it’s easy to be talked into using most any of them. If you come to the table armed with clear objectives for your entry into social media, and an explanation of how those goals fit into your measurable business goals, then you start to understand what services you need from the tools.

Example: In sample objectives above, normal sentiment analysis won’t help you solve customer service issues because you won’t know what’s driving negative sentiment. You will need something that can analyze and group complaints and themes, so you would instead look for a tool that is able to parse common themes in language, like Crimson Hexagon, Netbase, or Collective Intellect.

3. Understand the Output

Before you contract with a tool, ask the provider for help with building a report that maps back to your business goals and social media objectives. Work with your account rep to understand how you can take different outputs or reports from the tool and build them into a larger report that is relevant to key stakeholders, which may include other departments and those in the C-Suite. You may realize you are asking for more than the tool can provide, or that you are in for more work on your end than you initially bargained for.

Our Method

At Room 214, we are tool agnostic. We use a lot of different tools, and understand that as of yet, we cannot get everything we need from just one provider. It is important to have a deep understanding on your own needs before looking to contract with a tool. This is the best way to avoid having unrealistic expectations and get the most bang for your buck.

Yesterday, Facebook continued to make their platform more business friendly with the announcement of a new feature, “Tell Your Fans”. Within the Marketing tab of the Page Manager (to get here, simply click “Edit Page” below a page’s profile picture), page administrators can now use existing email contacts to build their Facebook following two different ways. The first option is to upload a file that contains an existing email list. The second option is to input your existing email address and allow Facebook to import your contacts.

Once either of these actions is completed, Facebook will take the following steps to invite your email contacts to join your page:

1. If an email address is linked with a Facebook account that is not already associated with your Page, Facebook will send the account a recommendation to “Like” your page. These recommendations are comparable to existing Recommended Pages modules that appear on the right side of users home screens.

2. If an email address is not linked with a Facebook account, an email is sent suggesting that they join Facebook in order to “like” your page.

While this feature will be sure to add another spark to the privacy debate already swirling around Facebook, it ultimately allows Page administrators to market directly to those already associated with their brand–for FREE.

Where did it come from?

This is not the first time this technology has been used for social media marketing. Thriving B2B companies like FlowTown and Rapleaf have been offering similar consumer information services for years. Both allow marketers to import an email list and identify demographics of the audience in addition to what social media accounts the emails are associated with. You can then email all members of the list that are already on Facebook and invite them to join your page.

“Tell Your Fans” is notably different in a couple key ways. First, Facebook differentiates between those who are already associated with your page and those who aren’t. While the accuracy and effectiveness of this feature is currently in question, in a perfect world it will make sure you do not unnecessarily reach out to existing members of your community. Second, and most important, “Tell Your Fans” lets you recommend your page within Facebook. This makes your page one click away as opposed to making users manually find your page. One would think this convenience will increase the number of the people who take the time to “like” your page.

Working out the Kinks

As the feature was just launched on Wednesday, there appear to be serious issues surrounding its effectiveness and functionality. After analyzing the tool, Inside Facebook has found that any Google email address prompts the error, “Everyone on this list is already associated with your page.” Other initial complaints from page administrators include email notifications are not being received, friend requests are being sent from members of the imported contact lists, and emails are being sent from an “unknown sender”. As they have in the past, I suspect Facebook will value this feedback and resolve these flaws in a timely manner.

Capture the Conversation

Have you tried the “Tell Your Fans” tool? How much value do you think it holds for social media marketers? Comment below and join the conversation.

I opened Facebook this morning and as 10,000 others did in the last hour, saw and clicked on the talking mint. I was kicked over to a “Like us” landing page and clicked the like button.

I then agreed to install the mentos coupon app (and let it have access to my friends and profile information). After that, I was sent out of Facebook to SmartSource coupons which for security and fraud prevention wanted to run / install a java apple, promising coupons afterward.

Coupons may or may not print. Around this point I began to remember the portion of behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s ‘Predictably Irrational‘ that dealt with the lengths people are willing to go to for “Free.” “Free” is like a bug zapper for consumers. You may know better, but it’s not likely you’ll be able to stop yourself. These free Mentos were becoming more and more of a bother. I flipped back to Mentos Facebook wall to see how excited everyone else was about their free mentos…

The Mentos page admin seems to be on top of the situation, changing the profile picture over to a text explanation of the expiration date (there was also confusion about the coupons expiring yesterday instead of a month from now.) While writing this post, 10,000 more users have “liked” Mentos. How far would you go for free candy?

Perhaps We Are The Others

Key takeaway here? They don’t care. I have a lot of friends in education, consulting, finance and various non-profit work and, thus, I have very few friends who interact with social media for business purposes. What I’ve found is that, while these people may have updated their privacy settings in the last few months (as have the majority of users), they are largely unconcerned. While they may check Facebook multiple times a day, they see the service as a positive fun-only experience. Those of us in marketing, social media, and tech see it as a something much greater and, therefore, believe that changes in privacy have far more impact on our own lives.

Case and point: My social media self's finely-tuned privacy settings.

Check out the stats from this poll on people’s opinions on internet privacy. It showed that people were neatly divided, with 45.96% feeling the right to privacy should be absolute and 42.28% thinking that privacy is our responsibility, not our right. I would love to take a similar poll and break it down by profession, and then perhaps by hours spent on social media tools.

In The Words of Garth Algar, “We Fear Change”

David Armano, via the Harvard Business Review blog, points out that Facebook isn’t about privacy anyway; it’s about agility. The site was created to rapidly adapt and always entice, and it does that well. Quit Facebook Day was a failure, partially driven by the fact that it was on a national holiday, but partially because a majority of people can’t be bothered. Facebook works for them. As it is our job in social media and marketing to scrutinize Facebook’s every move, these changes create a flurry of posts, Tweets and heated debate. For everyone else? Facebook changes, a few people complain, we all adapt, the change becomes a part of our life, the cycle starts over. And really, let’s be honest: how else would you know when to send birthday ecards?

I don’t want to downplay the importance maintaining a transparent privacy policy; I think Facebook has learned their lesson on that one. However, I do think it’s worth remembering the view of life from outside the social media bubble, how fast Facebook evolves, and how quick we are to forgive and forget.

Three Common Reasons for Social Media

In our experience at Room 214 we typically see three major reasons organizations dive into social media:

1. Product Development/Feedback
2. Sales/Marketing/Brand
3. Customer Service

Each one of those “reasons” requires its own cast of characters to “own” the process. In addition – each carries unique key performance indicators to measure the health and success of the project. Because function-specific business goals, community value and KPI’s are all different – it’s critical for anyone heading social media efforts in a particular channel to have a clear understanding of the impact measures.

Know Thyself

To steal from Farmer Ted ask: “Who Am I?” In a recent webinar delivered by the Altimeter Group about developing a social strategy one key point was to consider how your company will run things. Will it be Organic, like a Microsoft, where it’s loose and open? Centralized like Starbucks, where it’s controlled by one department? Coordinated like HP, where all departments are participatory but guided by strategy and rules?

The success for a social media program increases significantly when the structure matches the culture – in the beginning that is. As the organizations ingests social media into its culture it will change things – but to begin with – know who you are. Natural leaders will emerge.

Structure Your Team Based on the Golden Rule: You Respond To It – You Own It
The rule is if you respond to an online conversation you own it. For that reason you don’t want PR people responding to a customer service issue because more than likely they don’t have the authority, or resources, to drive resolution. If you’re not driving resolution with customer service issues you’re doing more harm than good.

Conversely you don’t want a product developer in charge of creating a response to an attack (justified or not) on the brand.
Know the conversations happening around your brand and make sure the right people are there to own it.

Ensuring a Common Thread

We do believe Corporate Communications should have intimate knowledge of the organization’s social media activities. Reason: a disturbance in the force requires a quick and professional response. The organization does not want the 24-year old tasked with community management on Facebook stoking consumer ire because they didn’t keep their cool.

Competent Sounding Board

Even if the Corp Com team gets pulled in there needs to be an individual(s) acting as a competent sounding board to provide insight into the rules and structure of the community. This keeps from crafting a response strategy that unintentionally throws fuel on the fire.

So Who Owns It?

Answer the questions:

• What’s your reason for getting into social media?
• How will you measure success?
• What’s your corporate culture?
• What are people saying?
• Who’s got the budget?
• Who’s got the time, energy and willingness to do it right?

Envelope Please
And the answer is: It Depends

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

- Dr. Suess

….glad you asked though.