Affinitive’s Social Media Playground

Facebook made some Page updates recently including the elimination of the Boxes tab and shrinking the width of the canvas to 520x.  We knew it was coming (Facebook announced the changes last October) and Facebook were kind of enough to display to admins ahead of time what their tabs would look like with the new 520x width, so most brands were prepared when the changes were unveiled this week.

Then Facebook announced they were eliminating the FBML application.  From the internal rumblings of the Affinitive development team, this presents huge opportunities.  However, there is at least one major consequence.

The elimination of both boxes and FBML apps means no more content on the left-hand column of the Wall tab (save for the native field below the profile image.)  Before this announcement, many brands used the left-hand column to place their moderation policies, guidelines, rules of the road and required legal language.  For some brands (a few of our clients included), that copy is required by their legal and compliance teams.

This content must now be pared down to the 255 character limit of the native field if you hope to keep it in the profile column.  That might work if it’s one line of legal, but a 200 word policy?  Think again.

For now, the easiest option is to place the content on the Info tab, which allows for significantly more text. Linked from the native field under the profile photo, the policy or legal language can still be referenced on the Wall tab.  If that's not an option, try creating an additional “Our Policy” or “Legal” tab with an application so there's a persistent navigation item referencing the required language.

Either way, if you’re a brand with a policy or legal language in the left-hand column of your Facebook page, you should discuss your options with your legal or compliance teams and find a way to adapt quickly.  Facebook is notoriously fickle, and the last thing you need is to get yourself caught in some social media red tape.

As companies continue to expand/extend their social footprints, they are increasingly benefiting from both the resulting traffic they are receiving from people sharing content from their websites with others as well as traffic to areas of their website containing user-generated content (UGC) from search engines.

I refer to these concepts as Social Referrals and Social SEO - two related, but very different concepts that any social marketer needs to understand:

Social Referrals:

Traffic to your site via content and/or links posted on social outposts such as Facebook and Twitter by yourself and others.

Social Referrals are driven by a combination of brand-driven referrals (posting a link to your Twitter/Facebook accounts), amplified sharing (consumer retweets), and via built-in sharing tools tied to content on your site.

For many companies (especially those with constantly fresh/dynamic content such as news sites and blogs), social referral traffic has risen to probably the #2 or #3 source of referral traffic (behind organic search and any online advertising).

Types of Social Referral Content:

• Breaking News (people share this quickly because they want to be the first to 'break' this to their friends)
• Viral Content, such as a funny video or photo (sharing this via Facebook/Twitter is considered ok/non-intrusive versus through email)
• Online Coupons/Sales/Offers (what can I say, people love free/discounted stuff!)
• Interesting/Informative Stories/Blog Posts (again, this content acts as social currency for the person sharing it, making them look good/in-the-know - the reality is, many people share this sort of content without even fully-reading the article! I'm as guilty as anyone else)

Social referrals tend to have a very short shelf life, and while true, some of the major search engines are starting to index them, their "relevancy" value in the eyes of search engines diminishes quickly.

Social SEO:

Traffic to your site via search engines, based on consumer-generated content relevancy to keywords.

Social SEO is a side benefit of facilitating user-generated content on your company's website. For example, consumers aren't necessarily seeking out information on, let's say, a bottle of Redwood Creek wine. But, what if the brand has a thriving consumer community of outdoor enthusiasts who love to post/share BBQ and campfire recipes? Over time, the relevancy of that content trickles up the search engine ranks, and eventually can work it's way to the top! We refer to this valuable, relevant, organic, indexable content as "Google Juice".

Next, you've connected with this consumer based on their interest, while introducing your brand to them in the context of that interest. Not only will they find the user-generated content they discovered as relevant and informative, but they may in turn go on to become a part of your community to connect with other like-minded folks.

(note: Social SEO only truly works if you have also implemented proper search engine optimization techniques into your website, i.e., title, meta tags, <h1>/<h2> html tags, etc.)

Types of Social SEO Content

• User-Submitted reviews, recipes, photos/videos (with proper meta info)
• Forum Posts/Discussions/Knowledge Bases
• Comments
• User Profiles

The value of Social SEO builds over time, since this content acts as a permanent archive/repository. It also creates a "long-tail" of relevant content, as each piece of UGC becomes in itself an SEO landing page. This makes it easy to measure/learn  what types of content drive the most search engine referral traffic.

Measuring the Impact of Social Referrals and Social SEO

If you are not measuring (both quantitatively and qualitatively) the impact of Social Referrals and Social SEO , you are leaving out a large component of the Social ROI equation! Some examples include:

• Short term traffic bumps (Social Referrals), long term traffic growth trend (Social SEO)
• Increase in engagement metrics, time on site, etc.
• Community registrations, email signups, fan/follower acquisition
• Coupon redemption/conversion to sales/transactions
• CRM insights (do social referrals result in larger/more frequent purchases? Are community members who joined via Social SEO more active/engaged than others?)
• Insights into consumer interests/needs and where your brand is resonating/standing out (i.e., wine + campfire/BBQ recipes = brand positioning)
• Customer support savings (consumers solving own problems via locating answers provided by other consumers on your community/knowledge base)

Let's me finish by asking you a question - how did you come across this blog post? Was it via a link someone tweeted or a Google search result? Drop me a line or leave a comment below if you'd like to discuss/debate further!

I'm as excited as anyone about the social marketing potential of the 'real-time' web, particularly as it applies to the mobile/location-based space. As more and more people flock to apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and BriteKite to document their every movement, everyone from local businesses to global brands are taking notice and trying to put together strategies to engage and reward consumers with "badges" (virtual "social currency") and discounts/offers (tangible incentives) through these platforms (for the sake of my post, we'll assume these are mostly actual consumers and not just all of us industry folks).

But the question remains - are you engaging/rewarding the right people? Let me use an analogy to illustrate…

Growing up, I spent a good deal of time working/hanging out at my family's pizza business. Like a typical small-town local business, there were always a few interesting characters/regulars who would make it their home away from home, hanging out in the store day after day. They'd interact with other customers, tell jokes, and drink soda. Lots and lots of free soda. But they would never buy more than a slice of pizza during the course of a day.

In their minds, they were the "mayors" of the restaurant, where "everyone knew their names" and in a way they felt like they "owned" the place. But to us, they were "mascots" - nice folks, fun to have around, but of no real value to the business (and in some ways, potentially distracting to both customers and staff). They often came alone (didn't have many friends), nor did they go out of their way to promote the business. My point is, don't equate activity with influence.

So, when executing your location-based (or any consumer engagement) strategy, ask yourself - are you actually targeting "Mayors" or "Mascots"?

(Note: Even one of my company's clients, Sports Authority, recently dove head-first into the location-based marketing space by offering $10 in-store cash cards via Foursquare to the "Mayors" of each of their stores nationwide. While it has made for a great PR/industry piece, the overall impact is just a blip on the radar compared to what they have seen by providing Facebook and Twitter-exclusive offers to their hundreds of thousands of fans and followers (or millions of others through weekend circulars), and won't have solid loyalty metrics for some time. And like any other business, unless these location-based social tactics are integrated into a larger CRM/loyalty initiative, you will never know if you are in fact targeting "Mayors" or "Mascots")

What is real?  If you were to watch David Kaplan’s new short movie entitled, Play, reality could just be a game.  If reality is simply what your five senses feed your brain, it is nothing but a series of electrical impulses.  So there’s reality reality, as in the sensation of spring time when the barren landscape of winter explodes with a giant ka-bloom of flowers on every tree.  Seems pretty real, right?  It is really just a series electrical impulses that trigger our synapses.  So what else conjures up electrical signals that effect our brain?  Enter: media.

In its purest form media is simply communication. In years past this included primarily newspapers, magazines and vinyl.  When the barrier to entry for media was at its highest—when you had to buy a printing press in order to spread the word—media moguls saw this as an opportunity to control the hearts and minds of the public.  At least that’s how Gail Wynad thought in Ayn Rand’s classic novel, The Fountainhead.  But look at ole Gail Wynad against our real life media baron, Rupert Murdock, it seems to be an accurate depiction.  It has been widely known for ages that “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

Now in the age of the Internet, there has been a philosophical jail-break of ideas and opinions through the ever-widening channels of social media.  Suddenly the hearts and minds are not forced into reading the daily newspaper and watching the evening news where the adage “if it bleeds it leads” is still painfully true.

Looking at the cause and effect nature of media, a massive shift also occurred.  Back in the day of printing presses, it would take many hours to broadcast the news from that day, no matter how gigantic.  That all changed with the advent of social media.  As documented by Dan Gilmor in We the Media, the day that it changed was on March 26, 2002 when Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio was answering questions during a press conference when someone in the audience, keeping track of the social stream on their mobile device, noticed that Mr. Nacchio had just sold $200 Million in shares in the company.  Contradicting what Joe was saying to the conference, this reporter raised his hand and called Joe on the carpet and asked him about the nefarious stock trade.

Media ceased to simply report events, and began to actually affect events.

Now we see that every day as Facebook brings together old friends—friends that would not have reconnected without the friend recommendation.  So, what is next?  Where is the media industry going now?  We’re like a snow globe all shook up.

Philosophically if News Corp loses its grip on us, and we are no longer force-fed the worst news the pundits can dig up, maybe we’ll start to see that the glass is half full.  If the public doesn’t have to take the incessant bad news, maybe this is a way to make the world a better place.  I have personally gone on a news fast and I feel great ever since.

I’m optimistic that although all this havoc is making it very difficult to make money in the media industry, there are many good things to come.  We don’t pick up the paper any more for front page headlines about murder, rape, political turmoil, religious warfare, cultural intolerance and greed—all because all of us have the power to generate content.  And if the concept of mind-over-matter has any glimmer of truth, just the avoidance of horrible headlines will bring more positivity to our world.  Time to stop and smell the virtual roses.

Talk about trending up!

When Facebook unveiled its Open Graph platform in April, coined "the next evolution of Facebook," perhaps the most important announcement was the introduction of the "Like" button.  "Like" is Facebook's effort to socialize the web by leveraging the social graph across the internet one line of HTML at a time.  In doing so, Facebook also opted to revise the call to action on Pages from "Become A Fan" to "Like" to make pages more Open Graph-friendly.

While Like might make sense as an action for objects and products, Like’s place in the lexicon of customer advocacy has remained a popular topic of discussion.  Brands have been rather perplexed as to what to call their legion of, dare we say followers.

We’ve seen brands change “Become A Fan” copy to “Like Us,” and some have taken the “Fan” copy down without a replacement.  Still others (ex 2) have kept Fan  for better or worse.

Facebook hasn’t made things any easier, populating their “Like Box” with the statement “Brand X has ### fans,” re-naming the Page wall filter from “Just Fans” to “Just Others,”  (Others?  Are we on Lost?), and providing this description in their Brand Permissions Guidelines:

"When inviting users to like your Page, say 'like our Page' or 'become a fan by clicking Like on our Page."

It seems this shift has struck a chord among consumers as well, as indicated by a recent Mashable poll which reported that ‘Become A Fan’ was more popular than ‘Like’ by nearly 2-1 among Mashable readers.

Some industry folks have summed up Like's clumsiness in a recent tweets:

There are more serious implications under the surface of the language change, and ReadWriteWeb aptly covered  these concerns a couple months back so I won’t get into that here.

For now, you might want to consider referencing Like as it pertains to the direct action of clicking the button on the page, and perhaps try other verbs such as "Connect" for less direct calls to action (such as a link to visit the page).  Using Fan as a noun still works outside of Facebook and as a reference to users already connected to a page, but keep in mind that Facebook probably won’t be changing the Open Graph nomenclature any time soon so it’s going to be Like until it’s something else.  I didn’t think ‘Become A Fan’ was the most universally contextual phrase for pages in the first place, preferring “Connect” or “Join” or “Subscribe” as a more accurate descriptor of the result of the opt-in action and to avoid blanketing consumers as having the same brand sentiment.  But alas, if we’ve learned anything from Facebook it’s that they do what they “Like!”

Here's a really nifty infographic I came across via the recent Smash Summit event's blog. While it doesn't contain much information I haven't already read/seen elsewhere, it provides a nice at-a-glance visual overview (unfortunately, the chart doesn't cite it's data sources). Print it out and hang it over your water cooler

(click to enlarge)