Each time a significant new development hits the social media landscape, the Ignite team will pull together a short analysis of the impact it might have on our clients. "Significant" in this case is pretty simple to define - if it creates new opportunities, or headaches, for our clients then it's important that we take the time to explore the change and share what we think.
 
From now on, we'll also share our thoughts with all of you.
 
Facebook Questions, what we cover in this post, is a great example. While it's not earth-shattering - we're not talking F8 and Social Graph here - it does create, or at least frustratingly hint at, some interesting possibilities for brand-managed Facebook fan pages.

Want to work in social media marketing? If so, throw your hat in the ring for one of these great new jobs. If you're not, please retweet this or share it on Facebook anyway to help someone in your network get the hookup.

We just added a half dozen folks last month, but we still need some more. Take a look at the jobs below, find one that fits you perfectly. Then read the tips at the end of this post and apply. If you're serious about the job and spend a little time on your application, we'll give you a fair look. (Conversely, if you just email us your LinkedIn profile with a "Hey, hire me" note, we're probably going to go ahead and delete your message. Just so you know...)

We anticipate that all of these jobs will operate out of our Raleigh-area headquarters, although applicants interested in working out of our Detroit-area office can apply as well.

I was recently scouring the web for bloggers for a client campaign. As I was searching, I ran across many posts in which a blogger dramatically confessed to loyal readers that he/she was taking a vacation from the blogging world. Others simply left blogs neglected without posting in a month or more.  At first I thought I may be jinxed, but then I realized I may have stumbled upon a trend – people are quitting their blogs.

So, in a quest to understand blogging trends and happenings, I researched if blogging was, in fact, on the decline. In my search, I was fortunate enough to speak with Google’s Rick Klau to get an insider’s perspective.

E-commerce social media integration is on the rise and most online retailers are integrating social in some fashion on their websites. Whether they utilize above fold real estate to do so or are burying it deep within product pages, there is no doubt that integrating it with the traditional website is important for brands.

We decided to answer the following questions by analyzing the top 100 retailers on-site social media integration, we used the following list of companies to do so:

• What percentage of sites have some sort of social sharing integration?

Homepage Specific

• What percentage of sites utilize homepage real estate to promote their social presences?
• What percentage of sites promote their social assets, such as Twitter, Youtube, Facebook etc?
• What percentage of sites promote their Facebook Fan page?
• What percentage of sites promote their Twitter page?

Product Page Specific

• What percentage of sites have product page social sharing integration?
• What percentage of sites utilize FB Like functionality?
• What percentage of sites utilize FB Share functionality?
• What percentage of sites utilize the addthis widget for sharing?

As most of my coworkers know, I get incredibly excited when I find new tools.  This month’s find is no exception. Over the past few weeks I was on the hunt for a really good RSS desktop application that is easy to use, customizable, and filterable.  Finally, after sifting through a handful applications that initially peaked my interest but later let me down or bored me, I discovered the cross-platform awesomeness of RSSOwl.  Download it here! 

If you work at a social media agency or even on an in-house social media team, you know how important it is to monitor brands and competitors (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read more about social media monitoring from a previous Ignite post by Brian Chappell).  This post will show you how to use RSSOwl as a cheap and easy social media monitoring solution.

A Free DIY Monitoring Solution Using RSSOwl:

Before you can begin you must first install RSSOwl and plan out which keywords are most important to your company.

Helpful Social Media Monitoring Tip #1: Words to monitor
•   Company/Brand Name
•   Influential people within the company
•   Products or services
•   Your competitors (via the above listed)
•   "use quotations to pull in exact phrases,” especially if the words you want to monitor are popular

The top 10 largest branded Facebook fan pages grew by 41% in the month of July alone (see June's ranking). The overall top 50 did well too, growing by an average of 26.5%. Combined, these 50 pages added over 42.4 million fans this month, or nearly 850,000 new fans each, on average.

The biggest movers in terms of ranking were:

• Xbox (+17 to 33)
• Monster Energy (+12 to 30)
• Playstation (+12 to 36)
• Walt Disney World (+11 to 34)
• Dr. Pepper (+6 to 23)

Perhaps not surprisingly, these were also among the best performers when I ranked the Top 50 pages by value earlier this month. When you get interactions, you get news feed inclusions and that leads to fan growth.

Amazon has always been a category leader in e-commerce for how helpful and personal its product recommendations have been.  Now they are taking this to the next level by pulling in Facebook's social graph to aid them in their current product recommendations. Even though this is still currently in beta, it is a glimpse for marketers into how Facebook can be utilized not only to create a more personal web experience, but to aid users in making purchase decisions.  This will also likely mean in the battle between Facebook and Google to be your default social profile, Facebook has yet another advantage.

I've been a long user of the functionality within Amazon that allows you to keep and organize wish lists for others (and myself), so much so that I create my entire Christmas and birthday lists within Amazon so that I can remember gift whims I have for others and myself throughout the year. 

Now with Facebook, Amazon's already impressive recommendations have been taken one step further by utilizing the data provided on my friend's profiles.  The following screenshot shows that after I've connected the two, I can be alerted on upcoming birthdays, and get a snapshot of the types of products that are currently popular among my friends.

Here at Ignite Social Media we like to stay abreast of trends and insights from notable industry experts inside and outside of the Social Media space. One of the best ways to do so is attending niche conferences around the country. I have had the ability to spend the last two days at the Blueglass LA event and wanted to share some of the session notes that I felt were worth noting.

About two weeks ago, I ranked the top 50 branded Facebook pages as of June 30, analyzing how their positions had changed over the last six months.

As with the first time I completed that ranking, a valid question was raised:

Does having the largest fan page mean you’re page is worth the most? No.

Biggest does not mean best

There’s a big difference between building a fan base and leveraging a fan base. So in this post, I’ve ranked the same top 50 branded Facebook pages by their value, at least as determined by Vitrue’s social page evaluator.

While I don’t necessarily believe in the “value” of the page calculated by this tool per se, it is a handy way to put a number to a page based on that page’s activity—looking at both post volume and the reaction to those posts. When you analyze the data this way, only three of the largest pages stay in the top 50. (Actually, it’s 51, as I inadvertently left Starburst off the Top 50 list. They are included here.) Here’s the list.

Dear Old Spice,

I just want to say that I love you.

Not in a romantic way, but in a way that I have the utmost respect for your ability to take a concept and run with it as far as you can. Your “guy on a horse” campaign premiered to fantastic reviews a few months back, and now you’ve done it again with a one-take masterpiece that once again features the swarthy and muscley Isaiah Mustafah (aka “the man your man could smell like”), and I am as impressed now as I was when I saw the first spot. Nay, I am MORE impressed with this spot.