While July saw the Top 10 branded Facebook fan pages grow by a spectacular 41%, growth in August was a bit more constrained, with the top 10 growing 19%.

Nevertheless, that means over 1 million new fans in one month for many of the top pages, with three of them, Facebook, YouTube and Coca-Cola pulling in over 2 million. Disney Pixar and Dr. Pepper grew at the fastest rate of any of the Top 50, growing 43% and 32% respectively.

Biggest Movers

There was a bit less movement in the top 50 list this month, but the biggest movers are:

• Disney Pixar (up 5 places to #16)
• Monster Energy (up 4 places to #26)
• Blackberry (up 3 places to #47) perhaps powered by their new phone launch; and
• Kellogg's Pop Tarts (up 2 places to #44)

Biggest Losers

Only Chase Community Giving lost fans this month, seeing their fan count drop by over 40,000 people. Browsers weren't so popular this month, as the biggest fallers in terms of ranking are:

"Adam Schoenfeld is the President and co-founder of RowFeeder, data junky, and spreadsheet lover. RowFeeder is the world's simplest social media monitoring tool, used by businesses of all sizes to collect and analyze social media data from the comfort of an Excel Spreadsheet."

When Mashable posts, people listen. And not only do they listen, but they echo, in the form of Retweets. We recently experienced the awesome Mashable Retweet machine on an article covering RowFeeder’s new social media monitoring in Excel. The article saw 1,365 Re-Tweets in total. On top of that, we saw a 20% conversation to sign-ups on visits from the article. We were amazed watching the Retweet machine in action and decided to take a look at the data and how we might apply Mashable’s practices to our content and social media efforts.

We found 5 primary things that make Mashable the RT love generator that it is…

In case you hadn't heard, Facebook launched yet another category-redefining feature last week. This time they shook up the still-emerging world of geo-location services, where buzz-worthy startups like Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah (MyTown) had been steadily and somewhat quietly testing models, adding features, and building user bases.

Not anymore. While the jury is still out on the long-term impact of Facebook Places, one thing is clear: in one shot, Places took the idea of "checking in" and made it both universal and effectively generic. With instant access to 500 million active users and near ubiquity on smartphones everywhere, Facebook Places has turned checking in from a cool and unique feature into a utility on par with sharing or liking.

Facebook is continually making progress toward developing itself into a marketer's dream. The social media giant continues to know more and more about its members through features including the Like button, Facebook Connect, and Facebook Questions. Now with Facebook Places, location based technology is added to its arsenal.

With the recent launch of Facebook Places, Facebook steps up as a threat/competitor to services (Foursquare and Gowalla) that previously dominated the location based applications. CEO of Mashable, Pete Cashmore, says this threat comes primarily out of Facebook's sheer numbers in his article on CNN Tech. And that number - 500 million strong - is a big part of what should make Facebook so alluring to marketers of all types.

Back in 2007, I wrote a post that continues to be one of our most popular to date "How to Write a Social Media Proposal" .  Since then, I've learned a lot.  For one - I've learned that that post was written more for social media marketers working at a social media agency responding to a Request for Proposal. But a lot of folks on the client side are wondering how to write that Request for Proposal in the first place. So three years later, it's time to update it. If you do work on my side of the table and want to review my old post, please download the PDF here.

To start with, I'm assuming you manage the social media efforts within your company. Because you wear multiple hats, you are also charged with finding the right agency to help you figure out your social media strategy, implement your social media efforts, and provide you with metrics and monitoring. You would also like an agency who "gets" your specific business objectives, quirks, and culture.

To help you find this agency, I've compiled a few crucial tips to help write a Request for Proposal that will help find the best agency for you. 

In my last article on the semantic web, I gave an overview of what many leaders in the internet programming and development field assert the semantic web to be, and I included a bit about how these developments would affect the way all of us interact with the net.

This post, and those to follow, will focus on more specific ways in which a semantic web could change the social media landscape as we know it. Like I said before, I'm no psychic (sad but true), so my assertions are purely educated conjecture based on research and developments that I've already seen unfold.

(**NOTE: Before we begin, I'd like to thank Chase Farmer for giving me a programmer's perspective of the semantic web and providing me with some great examples. In the spirit of semantics, I will tag Chase as "super-smart," "php master," and "music aficionado.")

Last week I attended BlogHer '10 in NYC. If you've never heard of the annual BlogHer conference and your target audience is of the female persuasion, look it up! You should know about this conference and about the BlogHer community. 

There were a lot of companies and organizations there, and by a lot I mean A LOT, so getting the attention of these women took more than having handouts and demos available.  While at the conference, I took a few notes of how these women interacted with the sponsors and exhibitors, and from these observations I left with four tips/takeaways that I'll share with you, so that when you do attend a BlogHer conference or any conference of this caliber, you'll be ready.

I need your help. We've got a panel under consideration for the next SxSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX. If you're not familiar with SxSW (South by Southwest, or "South by") it's basically spring break for geeks--a mega conference.

Great event, but last year's breakout sessions could've used more meat, at least in my opinion.

You Like This

So this year, we've offered up our own panel. Called, "You Like This – Lessons from Top Facebook Brands," the session will put managers from the Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages together on stage for the first time. That will allow me, as the moderator, to ask specific questions about how they grew their fan base, how they leverage their fan base and how they manage their fan base. 

It should be an interesting, very practical, very actionable session.

Understanding consumer behavior in a recession is important for every marketer, and should especially be considered within social media marketing efforts as well. However, this does not mean a marketer must always "consider the recession" by discounting or using heavy couponing within social efforts. 

In fact, the majority of our clients are requesting social strategies that allow them to react to the consumer changes during the recession without devaluing their brand through excessive deals or discounts.  To help you understand how you can learn the areas of the opportunity that currently exist, lets start by looking at the chart below from e-Marketer and PriceGrabber.com to see some of the current movements in consumer internet behavior from 2009 compared to 2010.

Web 3.0, the next big thing, the new wave, call it what you will. It's all semantics :). But I think it's coming.

As my fellow engagement team members and I organize our blogger contacts, and as the Wordpress tag cloud grows on my personal blog, I realize how much of a semantic web is already integrated into our online experience. We readily tag photos, check-in our location, register with our favorite e-commerce sites, and connect our Linked-In profiles with our Twitter feeds with our Facebook pages, all on our Tumblr blogs.

The semantic web, as defined by the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Tim Berners-Lee (who coined the phrase), is the idea a web in which computers will have "become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web - the content, links, and transactions between people and computers." He also considers this development as an intregal part of Web 3.0. You can check out this video from Technology Review for a more detailed explanation from the man himself. Berners-Lee also recently received a large grant to pursue this transition within the UK government.