Ignite Social Media Feed

Top 50 Branded Facebook Fans, August 2010: Fan growth slows

Jim Tobin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:17:00 GMT

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.

NOTE: To visit any fan page, click on its name in the Top 50 chart below.

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:

Mozilla Firefox (down 7 places to #50)
IHateBeingBored.net (down 7 places to #49)
Playfish (down 7 places to #39)
Ferrero Rocher (down 7 places to #23)
Google Chrome (down 6 places to #45)

New to the List, Falling off the List

Several pages joined the Top 50 list for the first time, including:

Nutella, which on August 3 finally claimed their massive unofficial page, although it doesn't seem like they quite know what to do with it just yet. They debut at #17.
Kohl's fan page grew significantly in the midst of the $500,000 for a school competition. They debut at #35.
Taco Bell found their way onto the list, debuting at #37.
Fashion retailer Forever 21 hasn't made it to 21, but they're closer, debuting at #46.

The pages that fell out of the Top 50 all added fans, but not enough relative to their competition. We say goodbye for now to:

Vitamin Water (formerly at #45)
Google (formerly at #46)
Lacoste (formerly at #47)
iPhone (formerly at #49)

August 2010 Top 50 Fan Pages

Current Rank (8/30/10)		Rank by Fan Count (7/28/10)	Change in Rank	Fans as of 7/28/10	Fans as of 8/30/10	% increase
1	Facebook:	1		14,536,039	17,428,429	19.90%
2	Starbucks:	2		11,204,005	13,000,758	16.04%
3	YouTube:	3		9,322,182	12,085,527	29.64%
4	Coca Cola:	4		8,869,747	11,085,636	24.98%
5	Oreo:	6	1	7,371,372	9,022,209	22.40%
6	Skittles:	5	-1	7,388,549	8,853,362	19.83%
7	Red Bull:	7		7,098,034	7,912,860	11.48%
8	Victoria's Secret:	8		5,556,183	6,527,874	17.49%
9	Disney:	10	1	5,000,299	5,955,862	19.11%
10	Live Messenger:	9	-1	5,054,886	5,527,220	9.34%
11	iTunes:	11		4,882,941	5,516,053	12.97%
12	Converse All Stars	12		4,261,722	4,914,899	15.33%
13	Victoria's Secret Pink:	14	1	3,959,757	4,742,287	19.76%
14	Pringles:	13	-1	4,250,614	4,662,071	9.68%
15	Zara:	15		3,724,899	4,494,301	20.66%
16	Disney Pixar:	21	5	3,003,131	4,302,849	43.28%
17	Nutella	N/A		N/A	4,293,812	N/A
18	Starburst:	19	1	3,283,465	4,030,404	22.75%
19	Converse	18	-1	3,467,171	4,024,101	16.06%
20	MTV:	20		3,245,687	4,012,331	23.62%
21	adidas Originals:	17	-4	3,570,633	3,899,247	9.20%
22	Dr. Pepper:	23	1	2,851,948	3,783,854	32.68%
23	Ferrero Rocher:	16	-7	3,592,281	3,756,298	4.57%
24	Reese's:	22	-2	2,910,291	3,541,858	21.70%
25	H&M:	24	-1	2,846,337	3,318,435	16.59%
Current Rank (8/30/10)		Rank by Fan Count (7/28/10)	Change in Rank	Fans as of 7/28/10	Fans as of 8/30/10	% increase
26	Monster Energy	30	4	2,387,186	3,137,089	31.41%
27	Chick-fil-a:	28	1	2,425,649	2,904,638	19.75%
28	Disneyland:	29	1	2,415,029	2,864,407	18.61%
29	Big Prize Giveaways:	25	-4	2,835,112	2,836,402	0.05%
30	McDonalds:	26	-4	2,626,810	2,825,365	7.56%
31	Chase Community Giving:	27	-4	2,621,058	2,579,452	-1.59%
32	Starbucks Frappuccino:	31	-1	2,354,181	2,568,973	9.12%
33	Xbox	33		2,073,834	2,508,475	20.96%
34	Walt Disney World	34		2,051,386	2,485,579	21.17%
35	Kohl's	N/A		N/A	2,447,335	N//A
36	Buffalo Wild Wings:	37	1	1,909,337	2,438,131	27.70%
37	Taco Bell	N/A		N/A	2,391,799	N/A
38	Playstation	36	-2	1,925,008	2,290,007	18.96%
39	Playfish:	32	-7	2,184,246	2,216,077	1.46%
40	Puma:	35	-5	1,930,344	2,150,726	11.42%
41	Subway:	38	-3	1,904,816	2,055,864	7.93%
42	Kellogg's Pop-Tarts:	44	2	1,668,786	2,019,055	20.99%
43	Dunkin Donuts:	40	-3	1,805,327	1,947,990	7.90%
44	Krispy Kreme Doughnuts:	41	-3	1,794,750	1,929,720	7.52%
45	Google Chrome	39	-6	1,855,871	1,904,740	2.63%
46	Forever 21	N/A		N/A	1,895,142	N/A
47	Blackberry	50	3	1,538,045	1,836,741	19.42%
48	Adidas Football	48	0	1,554,521	1,787,152	14.96%
49	IHateBeingBored.net	42	-7	1,765,905	1,782,409	0.93%
50	Mozilla Firefox	43	-7	1,698,552	1,777,767	4.66%

Methodology

If you're curious as to what types of pages make the list and what don't, please take a look at my first post listing the Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages.

5 Elements of a Retweet Machine: Case Study of Mashable

Guest — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:51:00 GMT

"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…

1. Mashable’s audience is comprised of influencers

Using a sample of 2 weeks, we found that over 25% of tweets of the whopping 173,00 tweets mentioning “Mashable” are from influential Tweeters – aka 1,000+ followers and/or a Klout score of 30 or higher. The average Mashable tweeter has ~1,300 followers. The following chart shows the influencer share of total Mashable tweets over the last 2 weeks.

2. The sun never sets on Mashable’s empire – RTs in every time zone

Only 54% of Tweets with “Mashable” come from the United States. That leaves almost half the tweets to be dispersed around the globe. There’s rarely a time of day when the tweet-o-sphere is quiet for Mashable mentions.

3. Mashable’s audience is not just influential, but also engaged

Approximately 1/3 people mentioned Mashable more than once in 14 days. 6% of people mentioned Mashable more than 5 times in the two week period we analyzed.

4. Mashable’s tweets contain links – Retweet friendly content

Almost all of the tweets with “Mashable” in the tweet contain a link. That’s right, 96% have a link. Links bring traffic and increase SEO for the post. We might also assume that users feel more comfortable RT’ing something with a link – something with a cold, hard (ok, soft copy) document to back up the tweet.

5. Mashable’s content is structured and designed for Retweets

Mashable articles are perfectly designed for Retweets. Alongside all their posts is an easy “Retweet button,” enabling users to easily engage with the story and the brand by simply pushing a button.

In addition, Mashable’s tweets are typically short and sweet, leaving room for user to easily re-post. Looking across all mentions of Mashable in the period analyzed showed the average length of tweets at 101 characters. Often this counts the “RT @Mashable” so the original posts are leaving plenty of room for users to share and comment.

4 Ways Foursquare Can Survive in the Facebook Places Era

Kevin Briody — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:32:00 GMT

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.

Does that mean Foursquare and all the other pioneers who also offer geo-location check-ins are headed for Friendster status? Not necessarily, but it is clear that just offering a service to say "hey I'm here!" or even "I was here more than anybody else!" is no longer sufficient to make users stand up and care enough to keep using your service.

They have to quickly differentiate themselves from Facebook places by providing unique value to their users.

Already we're seeing a second wave of geo-location companies doing just that. Companies such as SCVNGR, Shopkick, and TopGuest are narrowing their focus to provide unique and immediate value, in the form of coupons, rewards, or promotions. As a result, they are better positioned to weather the coming Facebook Places ubiquity.

So what's the key to survival for geo-location companies in the era of Places?

Focus on Coupons and Discounts

Coupons are hot, and no, I never thought I'd see myself type that phrase. Coupons for me evoke childhood memories of the large Tupperware box stuff with glossy clippings from the Sunday paper that my mom diligently sorted and maintained. But the "new" coupons - online, targeted locally, and offering social purchase incentives - are one of the fastest growing marketing tools on the Web today, thanks to startups like Groupon and Living Social.

Foursquare and others have had limited success in with targeted coupons and specials - in Foursquare's case, you see them if you happen to walk within 200 yards. All well and good, but the offerings so far seem sparse, particularly if you live outside heavily populated and tech savvy metro areas. Foursquare, Gowalla and others need to reinvent how coupons are targeted, shared, and pared with check-in data before Facebook does it first.

Embrace the Loyalty Programs

Who doesn't love accumulating points you can redeem for cool stuff? If you have a credit card, fly a lot, or shop at almost any major grocery chain, you're probably up to your eyeballs in loyalty program memberships. New services such as Shopkick and TopGuest are tailored specifically at working with companies to add a geo-location kick to their loyalty programs, rewarding the check-in with benefits most of us are already familiar with and value.

If anything, I expect this kind of geo-location benefit to become more common. Facebook itself is creating an enormous stream of user check-in data through Places, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it begin to partner with major brands to feed that data into their loyalty programs. The opportunity lies in doing it faster, and better, than Facebook.

Get Beyond the Mayor

Earlier this week Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare, did an interview with the UK's Telegraph:

"Crowley believes that Foursqaure’s gaming mechanics, such as the prospect of a user becoming the ‘mayor’ of a location they have visited the most frequently, will keep people far more enticed into using his service over the likes of Places."

Maybe that was true in the early goings, when becoming "mayor" of a hot location was both fun and achievable, and in some cases resulted in a reward (see: Starbucks). But as the service gains more users, becoming mayor of the places you actually care about can quickly become such a remote possibility that it's not worth caring about. Beyond the increasingly remote chance of becoming mayor, and some vaguely entertaining but otherwise useless badges, where's the fun?

Social gaming can be a huge draw for geo-location, but the rewards need to be both more tangible and accessible for the majority of users to make it matter in the battle for check-ins.

Make Privacy a Differentiator

When Places launched, I immediately started checking in around town to get a feel for it, then popped over to my Facebook profile page to see what that looked like to friends. It's then that it hit me: I have 400 friends on Facebook, and only a tiny portion of them do I want to have access to my whereabouts at any given time.

It's not that I don't trust them (seriously, I love ya all!), but I suspect many people are like me: Facebook is a hodgepodge of close and distant friends, high school buddies you haven't talk to in years, some business contacts you maybe mixed in before shunting them off to LinkedIn, and so on. My Facebook friend list has long since stopped being a small group of trusted contacts whom I feel comfortable knowing I'm not at home guarding the family and valuables.

Foursquare, Gowalla, and others, thanks to their relative newness, have an opportunity to address this problem and in turn make privacy a distinctive selling point. For example, allow for the creation of friend groups, and selectively share location info with each group.

Or create a simple way to share only with a small group on that service for most check-ins, and optionally push some that you want everyone to see ("I'm at a conference! Let's all meet up!") to Facebook Places. Facebook is notorious for putting user privacy second, which creates a massive opening for someone else to put it first.

Is the Success of Facebook Places Inevitable?

Despite everything else in this article, not necessarily. For any number of reasons Places could stall out after all this early buzz: privacy issues, a broken feature set, or even just a plain boring user experience that fails to excite their users (see: Questions). Success or not, the simple existence of Places is going a long way to validating geo-location as a key part of the social media mix, and as a legitimate tool for marketers to include in their programs and campaigns. That can only be good for all the geo-location players out there, assuming they can capitalize on it fast enough.

Facebook Places Creates New Marketing Value

Autumn Morris — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:03:00 GMT

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.

Facebook's Existing Knowledge of Consumers

Facebook's dominance over its smaller location-based counterparts extends even further because Facebook arguably "knows" you better than any other social media outlet. Isn't Facebook one of the ways you first judge acquaintances? From someone's profile, you can often determine exactly what kind of person someone is. Similarly, marketers can (and should) use information about a person's interests and activities based on the information freely shared by you, the consumer.

Facebook already provides marketers with a comprehensive list of your interests and favorite things with the integration of the Like button. Retailers, like Amazon, have already begun to leverage this information to create purchase suggestions for you and your Facebook friends. For more on the potential for this, check out Lisa's recent post explaining how Facebook and Amazon are taking social commerce to the next level.

The recent development of Facebook Questions adds yet another forum in which marketers can connect and learn about consumers based on questions and answers

Now, with Facebook Places, you are simply sharing one more element about you as a consumer. You have the ability to share where and when you shop, eat, and play. Marketers can (and should) use this invaluable information to direct promotions and advertisements to consumers. This, in turn, benefits the consumer by providing them with relevant and useful information from marketers so that your experience as a shopper can be enhanced.

Implications of Facebook Places and other Location-Based Services

I recently graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and was fortunate enough to take a new course in social media technology before leaving. My professor, Gary Kayye, used the following example when explaining the benefits of location based technology:

Imagine you are driving down the road and you pass by Starbucks. If you are carrying your phone with you, then services with location based technology have the potential to send you a coupon at the exact moment you are passing by that store. Would that be valuable to you as a consumer? Yes. Would that be valuable to you as a marketer? Absolutely. In both instances, the consumer and marketer are allowed communication at the most optimized moment - right before a potential purchase.

This information is highly valuable as social media once again allows businesses to gain access to the exact niche of consumers they are striving to reach. It will be interesting to see how businesses and consumers interact in this realm of real-time marketing.

Concerns for Privacy with Facebook Places

As with most new technology, there is always a backlash of privacy concerns. And I'll be the first to admit that these issues concern me as well. However, when used responsibly by Facebook users and advertisers, Facebook Places (along with other location based services) unlocks potential for creating communication between consumers and businesses that can provide great benefit to both parties.

As the old saying goes, "With great power comes great responsibility." With power to unleash personal information about yourself to virtually the entire world, you must use location based services responsibly with common sense and a bit of caution. A while back our CEO, Jim Tobin, provided a quick list of common sense guidelines about posting information online that remains relevant to this new technology.

However, if your privacy concerns still outweigh the benefits, you have the ability to manage your privacy settings or diable this feature.

The Future of Facebook Places

This most recent extension of Facebook offers the potential of a widespread adaptation of location based marketing as the threshhold for adoption is now lowered for the 500 million people using Facebook. With this application, a wealth of opportunites arise for marketers to strategically and effectively reach a widespread and optimal target of consumers. Another key benefit is the social nature of Facebook, which allows connections with individual consumers to spread to friends (who will likely have similar purchasing interests) via notifications and newsfeeds.

Still, as with any new development, the success and implications are yet to be seen as we social media geeks await to see how this development plays out. How do you think Facebook Places will change the location based game?

*Thanks to Kevin Briody for his insights and thoughts into Facebook Places as I put together this post. Look for his upcoming post continuing to flesh out the implications of Facebook Places soon.

How to Write a Social Media Proposal

Lisa Braziel — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:50:00 GMT

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.

Tip 1: Define your needs

A proposal should clearly address the specific needs you expect your agency to meet, and how you envision the relationship playing itself out. When defining your needs, think a minute about your internal resources, immediate project needs, and long term plan. Also consider the following:

Are you looking for a specialist or a generalist? If you already have an Advertising or PR agency that works well for your traditional efforts, but isn't up to speed on your social media efforts, you may want to search for a specialist in social media marketing. If you want a firm that can do a little bit of everything (i.e., launch social, do a press push on it and manage street teams for a launch event), you will need to write your proposal with this in mind, and provide the RFP to agencies that fit this build.
What is your timeframe? Are you looking for a one-time initiative to support a specific product launch, an overall strategy that your internal team will carry out, or a long term partnership?

Tip 2: Establish a Scenario with Specific Objectives

One of the best ways to tell if an agency is going to be a fit is to see how they think about your business. Instead of asking for the standard case studies and related experience (which can all be manipulated to look favorable for the agency) - see if the agency has the chops to develop a social strategy that will meet your business objectives. To do this - try to establish a reasonable scenario with clear objectives. Be specific.

While it is unreasonable for an agency to give you a mapped out plan of action answering all of your company's social needs - it is reasonable to ask what is the first thing they would advise you to do in the social space given your business objectives. Or you could ask their opinion on a specific social strategy that you're considering that is a tough call. Again, don't expect a full plan (you have to pay for that), but this will show you how they approach the space, and to see if they have done the necessary research on your company.

Tip 3: Ask about the future

If you want an agency who has potential as a long-term partner, ask questions that pertain to the future. It's one thing to hire an agency that understands the space now, but you need to ensure that they are also staying abreast of the changes in the space and how these changes will affect your social media strategy over time. Don't be afraid to ask large questions like "What do you see is the future of social media?" or "How do you see social media marketing evolving over the next year?" I realize these questions may seem a bit hokey, but they should elicit responses that are insightful into the agency's approach to social media marketing.

Tip 4: Reveal a budget

It may seem like hiding your budget and asking the agency how much you should spend in the space is a better route to go. However, the budget allows the agency to better prioritize -- from all of the social activities your company needs to do in the space -- which ones are most important. Since agencies sell time and expertise primarily, the budget can range dramatically depending on how much internal resources your company has or doesn't have.

For instance, some clients have invested in an internal social media team, and then hired us to perform their overall strategy and implementation of larger campaign tactics while they handle some of the day-to-day. With a budget in mind, and a good understanding of their internal resources, we are better equipped to provide recommendations for the internal team to carry out, and recommendations our team is capable of carrying out. A good agency will always have more ideas than you can afford (regardless of how big your brand is). If you don't provide a budget, we can't prioritize those ideas for you.

Other good reasons: Some agencies have project or fee minimums and you want to know that sooner rather than later. Also, ideas for $50,000 in spend are vastly different than ideas for $500,000 in spend. You want ideas coming back to you that are realistic.

If you're concerned about an agency costing more than another, you can ask for hourly rates and/or ask them to price one very specific project or sub-project. You might want to do this in the finalist stage.

Tip 5: Be reasonable

Writing an RFP shouldn't turn into a game of 100 questions. At this point in time, the best social media agencies have more work than they know what to do with in the social space, and are devoting more time to client work than responding to RFP's. Here at Ignite Social Media, we are currently responding to only about 20% of the proposal requests that we receive, and selecting our responses based on how the company helps build our knowledge in the space, and who we can respond to given our resources. One household name brand we're talking with told us, "We're struggling to get any of the good agencies to even come see us." That's very different than what you'll find in the traditional space.

Unfortunately, many marketers are developing their request for proposals based on the Social Media Group's template. Conservatively, this template has 100+ questions that if taken verbatum only social media consultants with a questionable amount of time on their hands could respond to. As the industry is currently, to attract the best talent you will need to streamline your list to the items that are based on your company's needs, and give a response timeframe that is based on the number and difficulty of your questions. Don't get us wrong, it's a good starting point, but you have to significantly pare it down or a lot of firms will pass on responding.

Tip 6: Ask for one good case study

Yes, we said earlier that asking for a bunch of case studies won't necessarily get you where you want to go, but it should be part of the discussion. Make it clear that you want to know the specific business objectives the agency was asked to solve, the solution the agency chose and the specific metrics that came out of the campaign. Double check as you go that the resulting metrics tie back to those business objectives.

Tip 7: Check references

Half of your new agency relationship wil be about the work, but half will be about the relationship itself. Ask the references very specific questions, such as,

How responsive is your account manager?
How often do they hit deadlines, even the internal milestones? How often do they miss them?
Are you satisfied with the creativiity of the ideas they bring you?
How long have you been working with them?
How many projects have they done for you?
Is the relationship what you thought it would be when you hired them? Is it better? Is it worse?

No agency is perfect. (Heck, no client is perfect.) But getting insights on to the difference between what they promise and what they deliver is key.

These are just a few tips to help guide you in the creation of a social media proposal that will get you the most qualified social media agency. The biggest takeaway is to structure your proposal so that you set the agency up to talk more about your company than their agency. This forces the agency to show you how they think, and more importantly what opportunities they see for your company.

Have any other tips? Please share in the comments below.

How the Semantic Web Will Change Social Media Marketing Part 2: Social Networks & Your Burnt Cookies

Megan Hannay — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:50:00 GMT

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.")

The Burnt Cookies Backstory

Remember those awful cookies from my last post that burnt down your small business when hypothetically you spent too much time on Google?

They're back, the jerks. This time in HTTP form.

It began like this: once upon a time, in a land far far away, the guys behind online ads realized that they could more efficiently market to their users (and, therefore, garner more revenue), if they began storing little packets of text within users' browsers each time they visited a particular website or used particular keyphrases in searches. These packets were dubbed "cookies." Cookies can do a lot of really neat things from a marketer's perspective. Each one is unique (like snowflakes!), meaning that each user is uniquely tagged, and when this tagged user arrives at sites that are enabled to read the cookies, his or her unique cookie is recognized by the browser/server. In this way, cookies can ostensibly follow an IP address on many sites around the internet, seeing which kinds of sites a user frequents, what kinds of search queries they enter, and what kinds of products they purchase.

But cookies have their downfalls too. They are often eaten ("cleared"), and if not, they'll eventually go stale (i.e. "expire"). Therefore, one individual IP can only be tracked and marketed to for a certain amount of time before the cookies have to start all over. Not to mention the fact that multiple people may be using one computer, and multiple computers may even be using the same IP, meaning that a person with a pretty lackluster enthusiasm for sports such as myself could be lambasted with banner ads for NFL-related merchandise because her (my) younger brother spent three hours updating his fantasy football league on espn.com.

Basically, your cookies are so burnt out.

Why Facebook > Google

With the rise of social networks came the rise of log-ins. To Facebook, I'm not just a random IP address, I'm Megan Hannay of Durham who graduated from UNC in '09 and has over 300 tagged pictures and who "likes" Wilco and 100 Years of Solitude. And I can't navigate Facebook without identifying myself as such.

(NOTE #2: I realize that there are a lot of privacy issues with social networks and marketers, so much so that one of my next posts is going to be all about that very topic! So if it seems like I'm ignoring the issue of privacy here, it's just because I'm going to cover it more in depth soon.)

Where did you first hear that Michael Jackson died? That Proposition 8 was overturned? Where did you get most of your updates on the BP oil spill? The likelihood that you heard about at least one of these developments via a social networking site is pretty high. Some bloggers, such as Steve Rubel, are already jumping on 'team Facebook' as the next big news source.

And Rubel isn't alone. In February, ReadWriteWeb made the same argument, citing Facebook's blog post that encouraged users to "like" news sources from their profiles as an example of the company's efforts to become our one and only source of...well...everything that's fit to click-through to.

Even with customized searches, no search engine could match Facebook's knowledge of its unique users. Including my friends, my photos & videos, my "likes," and my personal info, Facebook has 822 tags on me - just me! And this doesn't take into account the stats on the links I share or the friends I communicate with the most (and their "likes," which, one could argue, are probably akin to my "likes" too). So it makes sense that the ads and social shares that are coming my way via Facebook are more likely to apply to me, mean something to me, or be valued by me, since they all come from "likes," friends, and interests that I've explicitly and purposefully tagged as pertaining to me.

Plus, with the rumors that tonight's Facebook announcement may concern the long-awaited release of a geo-location tool, it seems that this network is going to know even more about me and my friends.

What This Means for Marketers

Now, more than ever, brands are able to narrow down their target audiences. The days of "we're looking for 15 - 30 year old males who enjoy watching professional basketball" will soon be gone. If I wanted to, I could create a Facebook ad for 23 - 24-year-old engaged women who attended college, like cupcakes and white wine, who work for Paramount, and who are not already fans of The Food Network, but whose friends are fans of the Travel Channel. I have no idea what you would sell them (besides cup-sized wedding cakes with movie star prints on them that don't taste very good, but can be sent to friends and family all over the world), and that example was clearly an extreme, but the point is that the semantic nature of social networks will allow for previously unimaginable targeting to the perfect demographic.

But with great targeting power comes great targeting responsibility. In other words, if you're going to presume to talk to such a select group of individuals, you'd better know exactly how to grab their attention. Once the semantic web is alive and kicking, it's not only consumers who will be semantically tagable, it's also campaigns, themes, memes, brands, fans, even Dan's and comic sans.

If social networks like Facebook truly are the future of all conversations and sharing of all kinds, then brands need to ensure that they're developing content that isn't going to get lost in the shuffle. When Old Spice targeted celebrities, they didn't go after Ashton or Kim or either of the Justin's; they made videos for Kevin Rose and Alyssa Milano - a techie and a philanthropic actress - to get the ball rolling. The team behind this campaign knew exactly to whom they needed to reach out to really start some conversations around their brand.

In an age of semantic tagging, only relevant and interesting content will survive, so remember, friends, to be a tough cookie :).

In my next post I'll outline more specific examples of semantic-web related social media promotions, apps, and sites.

Lessons Learned at BlogHer '10: 4 Tips for Getting Your Brand Noticed

Christian Sullivan — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:28:00 GMT

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.

4 Tips for Getting Your Brand Noticed

1. It's all about the swag! The attendees walked the exhibit halls gathering the fun items each company provided. For me, the swag I considered "valuable" made it into my luggage and into my home. Those that did not benefit me, never made it out of my hotel room.

Bottom line, your swag must be valuable to your audience. However, valuable doesn't necessarily have to have a large price tag. For example, I received an Arm & Hammer coupon for a free bottle of the company's laundry detergent and to me that was valuable.

However, while we all know the attendees love the swag, to truly make an impact at BlogHer you must go above and beyond. The remaining tips will focus on how to do just that.

2. Do something unique! Because there are so many exhibitors and sponsors there, a company could easily get lost in the wave of other organizations. To stand out above the rest, try doing something unique. For instance, Chevy was a big sponsor at BlogHer and instead of handing out swag, they provided a valuable service to the bloggers and attendees with the Chevy Voltage Room which was your recharge station. Attendees were there blogging, tweeting and communicating through numerous social outlets which involved the use of their smart phones and computers. Eventually, every attendee needed a little charge to get through the day and the Voltage Room became that place.

Other unique ideas included onsite makeovers (CoverGirl and Pantene), shipping swag to attendees' homes free of charge so they didn't have to stuff it all into their luggage (Pepsi) and hosting a TV cooking show, onsite, using conference attendees as the audience (Jimmy Dean).

3. Mingle and Make Yourself Available! I noticed very few of the sponsors and exhibitors left their booths or stations to actually spend time in sessions and with attendees. However, for those that did take the time to speak with many of the bloggers they accomplished more than expected by simply saying “hello.” By getting involved these sponsors and exhibitors got to hear directly from the bloggers about how they’d like to be approached, what pushes their buttons and what makes them jump on an opportunity. Additionally, by doing so these bigger brands made the brand they were representing develop a human persona. This is an important connection to the consumers and one that will better help brands successfully approach the bloggers.

4. Make Your Presence Known - Ahead of Time! With all that is now available on the web, why would you not reach out to individuals prior to the event's start? You could be giving away high priced products and providing extras to bloggers to giveaway on their personal sites, but if no one is aware of what you're doing, that promotion will likely fall flat. Yes, no matter how cool.

It's so easy to do a simple blogger search to determine which bloggers will be attending. Try taking the time to identify 20-40 bloggers that will be at the conference, then send each blogger a personalized email to let them know what you'll be doing at BlogHer and that you hope to see them there. An act as simple as that could help drive awareness and draw an audience.

Want to take it a step further? Start connecting with these bloggers now. Introduce your product(s) by offering them to influential bloggers for review. Provide them with the products to also give away on their blog. That way, when you reach out just to say hello and to let them know you'll be at BlogHer, they'll likely be more receptive. Additionally, this step could be imperative if you simply want to attend the conference to make connections. If you make these connections ahead of time, then you have a reason to approach those bloggers at the actual event. Lastly, once you get to the conference, be sure to follow-up with those bloggers that responded to your initial outreach. Can't find them in person? @reply them via Twitter. They were all over Twitter making their own connections so when I reached out, they quickly responded.

Wrap-up

In short, your mere presence at a BlogHer conference will get you nowhere. As a brand, if you want to leave an impression on the bloggers attending the conference then you must think outside the box. Who is your audience and what will drive them to think twice about your product? Whatever you think that may be, go with it and leave the branded frisbees back at the office.

I'd like to leave you with one small piece of advice. Bloggers are very powerful. They are the consumer, and therefore are highly trusted by their readers. Be nice, know what's important to them, and take into account what actions will make them happy versus which ones will result in a negative post about your organization.

Did you attend BlogHer? What were your takeaways?

Help us bring you the top Facebook brand marketers at SxSW

Jim Tobin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:36:00 GMT

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.

We Need Your Vote

30% of the selection process are user votes. Please go to our session, log in (sorry, that's a bit of a hassle, but it makes your vote count LOTS more), and give us the old Thumbs Up.

You will need to register for the site, get an email confirmation, click on that, and then give us the thumbs up. And a lot of people aren't going to do that. So if we can just get a few dozen readers of this blog to follow through on it, that would put us in a great place. Please help.

Why You'd Help

There are really two reasons you might consider helping us:

You really want to hear from the marketers running the world's top Facebook fan pages; or
You generally like what Ignite Social Media is doing and you have a minute to help us out.

I'm not proud. I'll take your help regardless of the reason you offer that. Thanks for voting.

3 Social Media Marketing Tactics to Consider in a Recession

Lisa Braziel — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:45:00 GMT

Understanding consumer behavior in a recession is important for every marketer, and should 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.

As you can see in the bullet points below, I have ranked the largest 5 movements according to percentage point increases. Ranking these actions in this way helps distill which actions have most dramatically changed compared to last year.

29 percentage point increase in shopping/researching online
19 percentage point increase in price comparison shopping
13 percentage point increase in social networking
13 percentage point increase in watching videos/TV shows online
12 percentage point increase in obtaining news and information

What is most interesting from a marketing perspective is that finding and printing coupons is not in the top 5. In fact, we see a much more drastic increase happening in the amount of shopping and researching products online, with a 29 percentage point increase from last year.

So what does this mean for your social media marketing efforts? Based on these 5 movements, I've come up with three social media marketing tactics you should consider this year:

Blog/vlog outreach: If more consumers are conducting their research online, you need to develop social tactics that will improve the search engine results of your products. Blog or Vlog outreach is a great way to seed external reviews of your products, and build valuable 3rd party credibility that you can't create on your product site. Why have I also included vlog outreach? Video content has been known to rank well organically, and with YouTube currently ranking as the third most popular search engine, it also can't hurt.
Video Tutorials: With consumers watching more content online, it is also important to consider how you can show someone how to use your product, rather than tell. If you have a company blog or even have an ongoing Facebook page - consider creating a mixture of content that includes video content. Like we mentioned before, this content is preferred within the search engines, and also tends to be served more frequently in news feed in Facebook.
Facebook Page Management: With more consumers engaging in social networks, it becomes more important to proactively manage your Facebook page. If you are still letting the intern update your page every now and then, and are still putting off investing in ongoing page management - you are missing out on an opportunity. More and more data is showing that updating frequently on behalf of your brand is the best way to increase news feed inclusions, engage your fans, and ultimately grow a fan base that you can activate.

These are just a few of the tactics that can be pulled from this data, but hopefully these shed light on how to use consumer behvior to develop not-so-obvious social tactics during the recession. Do you have any other tactics you would suggest? Please share in the comments below!

How the Semantic Web Will Change Social Media Part 1: Comparing Search Results to a Missing Red Sock

Megan Hannay — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:35:00 GMT

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 tag cloud grows on my personal WordPress blog, I realize how much of a semantic web is already integrated into our social media experiences. 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 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.

Can I have an example?

The vision for the Berners-Lee/W3C-esque semantic web entails an internet that is completely navigable by a computer. Imagine you're a small business owner in Raleigh, NC, looking for some help with your social media marketing strategy. Maybe you don't know anyone in the biz, so you're not even sure if you want to hire an individual consultant or an agency. You go to google, search for "social media," and you get these results.

Hmmm...okay, a pure definition of social media may not have been what you were looking for, so you revise your search to "social media marketer" and end up with this. Still not quite right, so you refine your search even further, maybe looking for someone who lives in the area, maybe looking for someone who specializes in small businesses such as yours. (I now imagine that you own a bakery - the cookies are probably burning as you continue to fine-tune your searches.)

After a dozen or so queries (and maybe even a phone call or two : /), you'll likely find what (or whom) you were looking for, as long as the burning cookies didn't set your kitchen on fire and burn your new small business to the ground.

The Missing Red Sock

Now imagine a web that turns up the social media consultant of your dreams after your first "search." It can tell where you're from and what you're looking for based on your location, job, age, and purchasing preferences, and it can find what you're looking for by filing through millions of rows and columns of data until it finds a result uniquely tailored to you. Filed away in in the largest (and most multi-faceted) database you've ever seen, it's a web made of computers that "know," so to speak, what you're looking for and where to find it and can even point you to a few helpful blog posts along the way.

I see a semantic web as a "self-aware" web. Every entity within the web (every word, page, picture, etc.) would be like a single entry in a giant database, cross-referenced with dozens, if not hundreds, if not thousands of other, related, entities. It's like if your bedroom could locate a specific red sock - the one with the white stripe across the toes, the one that your grandmother gave you for Christmas three years ago, but not the one with the giant hole in the heel - within the biggest, most jam-packed drawer of red socks you've ever seen.

And not only that, but it with the click of a button, you could also find out which of your 258 outfit combinations work best with the red sock or geo-locate the factory from whence this red sock came or even find out which of your friends have "liked" this brand of sock - bascially any and all information that is somehow pertinent to the red sock would be available to you. A semantic web would be able to read, comprehend, organize, and locate every piece of content that it holds, because every piece of content would be defined through a complex tagging structure. And now you not only know of the location of this red sock , but you would know why this article of clothing matters in the greater sense of the world wide web, and you would know that it's associated with a specific subset of other pieces of content, including red, sock, clothing and more.

As we delve deeper into the possible implications of a "self-aware" web, so many questions arise. How would this transition occur? When will it occur? Will "it" be a "he" or a "she"? But as a social media marketer, many of my questions immediately turn to the future of my field. My next three blog posts are going to address these questions and relay my (very humble) opinion on what a semantic web will do to:

Social Networks - and why "they" keep saying that Facebook could be the next Google

Marketing Campaigns and Crowdsourcing

The Idea of Consumer Privacy

As Lisa recently addressed, changes are already beginning to unfold. And if one my favorite films of all time can tell us anything about our ability to predict what's next, there's no way any of us can imagine it all (see any flying cars, Doc? hooverboards? where are the self-drying jackets?), so I'd love to hear your input on where you think these platforms are headed with the semantic web, and I'll definitely take them into consideration when I'm writing these upcoming posts. (In an ironic twist of fate, it seems that I'm crowdsourcing an article on crowdsourcing!). Until then, please don't give up on your missing red sock, and when you find it again, consider tagging it this time.