When marketers decide to use any marketing channel, they should always ladder back to the brand's objectives. This is hardly a novel concept and is part of any strategic process, such as the famed Forrester POST methodology, that many use to determine a Social Marketing plan of action.

When it comes to Social Marketing specifically, those objectives can often range from increasing brand site engagement and traffic to Public Relations and everything in between. Just like any other channel, it can be used as a funnel for a variety of types of messaging that is targeted at a varying set of objectives.

Enter an interesting little chart (embedded here).

Like many other marketers, I subscribe to Marketing Sherpa's Chart of the Week.  These handy charts often give a snapshot on one element going on in the world of marketing that they've done a broader research initiative surrounding.

I thought this week's was particularly interesting. It measures the objectives, targeted and measured, by marketers within the social sphere. The big "aha" finding in this is that 3/4 of marketers claim that site traffic increase is one of their key objectives for deploying social tactics.

Marketing Sherpa's conclusion is the same one that I would come to - while an increase in time on site, overall site traffic, SEO optimization and other objectives within that zone are great secondary benefits of Social, there is a larger opportunity to leverage social in a scalable way to provide self service tools and information to consumers that can then, in turn, reduce overall brand cost that can be very heavy when dealing with and addressing customer needs.

There are several brands who actively leverage social platforms to reduce these customer support costs including:

• JetBlue and Virgin America - who actively tweet and provide information about flight delays, schedule changes, weather alerts, and responses to specific customer inquiries
• Best Buy's "Twelpforce" - integrated from Twitter all the way to in-store Point-of-Sale (POS), this massive program helps answer customer questions, provide product information, support, etc in a scalable way
• Comcast's service guru Frank Eliason, who has been deemed the "most famous customer service manager in the US" by Brandweek for his work primarily in the social space (major points for early adoption)

Have you seen any other examples of brands leveraging Social Marketing to help create a supportive consumer environment?

That being said, I find it surprising that more brands aren't providing simple ways to allow their customers to share information offline.

One company that has it figured out is high-end audio manufacturer Bose. I've been a happy owner/early adopter of their QuietComfort noise-canceling headphones for a number of years (on my second pair, in fact, after leaving my last pair in a hotel room safe - Marriott, hope your cleaning staff who "didn't find them" is enjoying them!). When these headphones first came onto the scene, chances are if you were wearing them while on a crowded business flight or vacationing, someone would come up to you and ask about them. Now, seems like everyone is wearing these $300 headphones everywhere I go!

So, what's the ingenious thing that Bose has done? They have simply included informational pass-along cards right in the headphone case. That's right - for probably less than $0.10 in packaging, they've incorporated a offline referral tool right with the product.

When someone asks, regardless of whether or not I feel like talking about the headphones, how they work, etc., I can simply hand them a card which directs them to a website where they can get all of the information they need. (Note to Bose - why not direct these referrals to a special landing page that acknowledges they were referred by a friend, with reviews/testimonials, etc. as well as provide a way to better track the referrals? Drop me a line and we can talk more...)

Bose has made it easy to spread the word. How is your company making it easier for your happy customers to pass you along?

(Oh, and JetBlue and Enterprise, hope each of your cleaning crews are enjoying the two 32GB iPod Touches I also managed to leave behind over the past year... but that's a story for another day!)

Security has long been an issue for IE6 that Microsoft has continually patched up over the years. The "Operation Aurora" attack on Google and other companies back in January used yet another unknown security hole in IE6, and seemed to lead much of the internet community to say "enough is enough" and expedite efforts to stop supporting the use of the old browser.

It has been long known that Microsoft will stop supporting IE6 in 2014. Not surprisingly, Google and Apple are among the leaders in making people upgrade as soon as possible. Apple's MobileMe has not supported it for a few years. Google Docs will no longer work in IE6 next week on March 1. YouTube will follow on March 13 and Gmail later in the year.

Security issues aside, the main problem is that IE6 is the product of the 90's and Web 1.0 methodologies. This was before there were many established standards for the web and when having features that only worked on your browser was a good idea. Check out the great "Life, Times (and Death?) of Internet Explorer 6" comic strip by Brad Colbow to brush up on your history.

So when new standards were introduced and Web2.0 came around, "hacks" had to be used to get these new great parts of the Web to work on IE6. Creating these hacks is quite costly in terms of developer time and often make the site slower. Web2.0 makes heavy use of javascript to make everything speedy and interactive, but even IE7 (the successor to IE6) is much slower at running javascript than other web browsers. So even though you spent tons of money to create the greatest web site, it's not going to seem so great to all the people that are still using IE6.

[via Facebook with language set to Pirate]

So rather than continue to create these hacks and make people think they don't need to upgrade, the best tactic is to serve up a simple alternate version of your site with a message informing users how to upgrade to something better for free. Spend your money implementing better new features than wasting your time making everything work in IE6.

Last week, we had our first official ok from a client to not support IE6. It made our day. IE6 is finally going away, you can feel it in the air, and I'm happy to join with thousands of web programmers and designers around the world in a collective "Huzzah!"

[IE6 Cartoon image taken from RobotJohnny.com]

[EDIT 2/28/2008: we found a site with code you can simply plop just inside the body tag of your html to encourage users to upgrade: ie6nomore.com]

Like countless others, I've been glued to my TV for the past few days absorbing all of the Olympics action, from the opening ceremonies to the drama of the women's snowboard cross final. At first it was fun watching the Twitterverse provide funny side commentary via the #Olympics hashtag (even I’m guilty of posting a few tweets during the opening ceremonies, hoping that the Canadian band Rush would perform along with their laser show).

However, the opening ceremonies were the last thing I watched "live." Because I'm at work while many of the events are happening, I've made a habit of recording all Olympics coverage on my DVR, then camping out on my couch for a few hours each evening before bed to catch up on the day's happenings. In addition to skipping commercials, I'll skim through the less-exciting parts of events such as the biathlon (will skip most of the cross-country skiing sections, but will watch the shooting!).

But, for me, watching the Olympics has been somewhat bittersweet. No matter how much effort I make to avoid finding out any results in advance, I somehow keep getting spoilers, mainly because a good part of my workday is spent interacting online. It seems like just as I tune out one information spigot, another one leaks:

• Twitter/Facebook: The usual suspects. It goes beyond just monitoring the #olympics hashtag.
• News: I frequently access CNN and ESPN during the day to stay on top of the news, but when I see a headline on the homepage that says "Miller takes bronze in downhill," it's a bit of a buzzkill for the evening.
• Mobile: Mostly related to international soccer matches we might get on delay here, but I’ve gotten text message spoilers from friends with game scores/congratulations/condolences. I’m a big fan of the official Olympics iPhone app (I've been using the app to check out the schedules), but the other day came across the real-time results of the men’s snowboard cross (another buzzkill).

It's forced me to take a self-imposed "Social Media Blackout" during the day (i.e., I'll only check in during the morning when I know there are no events in progress, or, only push out messages from my phone so I can avoid seeing any conversation).

There are several ways that a person will encounter programming in a time-shifted manner:

• Consumer Time Shifting: People elect to manually record programming (DVR, VCR) to watch at a later time, at their convenience.
• Network Tape Delay: TV network determines that certain content will air at a later time, e.g., moving the men's downhill finals to prime time.
• Location: People in later time zones are forced to watch network time-shifted programming so it falls in prime time (e.g., can't air "Lost" at 5 p.m. PST).

While problem #1 is self-imposed by a person, they have no control over problems #2 or #3 (that's the fault of the TV networks).

Therein lies the paradox. We live in a time-shifted world, yet we are getting our information in an increasingly real-time manner.

The repercussions go well beyond the Olympics, as this essentially impacts *all* entertainment we watch on TV (awards shows, "Lost," sport events, etc.). In an effort to avoid spoilers, people will be forced to take self-imposed social media blackouts until they have watched their time-shifted entertainment. And for sports in particular, there will be repercussions to the networks, since the fact is, consumers will be less likely to tune in to something if they already know the result.

So, how can we prepare/deal with this problem? "Time delay" filters on Twitter and Facebook that will stagger tweets/posts from your east coast friends by three hours? "Hide results" options on sports news sites?

Please share your suggestions below!

“Hello, My Name is Erica and I Am a Twitter and Facebook Junkie”

The key I have found for really understanding Twitter or Facebook (when to use it, how to use it and why to use it) as marketer is simple: You MUST be a fan and consumer of the medium.

In the hilarious article "Are You a ‘Twitter Quitter’" by Michelle Godall, she points out that "the fact remains that personal experimentation of social media is a key prerequisite to helping businesses understand, embrace and use social media effectively."

The best social media marketers are those that are able to understand it's workhorses, Twitter and Facebook, from more than a strategic research based perspective.  To join in a conversation with your clients, brands and consumers you need to really understand the ways in which people interact in the social networking landscape from a practical standpoint.  The nature Twitter and Facebook is dynamic and constantly changing; if you haven’t logged in to your Twitter or Facebook account in the past 60 days, you have missed out on how the changes you are simply reading about are affecting the very audience you are attempting to engage.

I have a few ideas for those marketers who want to be better about being advocates as well as consumers of Twitter and Facebook:

1. Why are you here?

Define why you are on Twitter/Facebook.  What is it you want to accomplish? Are you looking for new friends or customers? Are you looking for a way to interact with current fans? Are you attempting to brand yourself?  Once you define a clear reason for being in social media, it can better direct how you use it to accomplish your goals.

2. Be authentic.

Make sure you are who you say you are and what you represent.  If you chose to use an alias make sure that the accurately represents who you ACTUALLY are and the goals you have already defined for yourself within the social media context.

3. Be timely.

Update and engage frequently.  This means checking in to your accounts daily, and sometimes multiple times a day.  Update your Twitter status frequently with information that is relevant to who you have defined yourself to be and the reasons why you are in the space. Remember, "you have to be in it to win it."  If you aren't logging in to your social media accounts 3+ times a week you can't call yourself an expert, your are merely a passive user.

4. Join the conversation in a relevant way.

Interact with other users in a relevant way.  Offer some unique perspective, don’t just rehash (or in the case of twitter re-tweet) news without some perspective attached to it.  Share intellectually stimulating content.  A good barometer of this is to share and interact on things which ignite a passion in you; this includes things that you’d discuss with your friends at the end of the day. The conversations you chose to join should be timely, authentic and true to the reasons for your existence in the space.

Still not sure what types of things will engage your audience? Take a look at the science behind the New York Times most e-mailed posts here.

5. Give back and give “props.”

Stop with the pitches and begging people to re-tweet your content.  Social media is about getting things from people, but much more about what you give.

Are you a retailer? Give away discounts or coupons.  Are you trying to develop your personal brand? Give away advice, inspiration or perspective on your industry.  No one wants to follow someone or engage with a brand that is about one-way communication.  If you are getting something out of the social media space, remember to give back as well. Give people something that will uplift, enlighten, cause them to think, or stimulate conversation.

Another way of giving back is to give “props.”  Acknowledge those fans and experts that inspire you or have something relevant to say.  If a piece of news or content comes your way make sure to give credit to the person or persons that inspired you.

Of course, there are many other ways to effectively engage the Twitter and Facebook  landscape; these are simply a few ideas to initially get the savvy marketer on the bandwagon as not only an expert, but a fan.   Join me in my addiction, become a fan, not just a spectator.

It appears now that Facebook is ramping up their Insights offering, having debuted a new ‘Impressions’ metric for page admins to sink their teeth into.   Impressions, according to a Facebook spokesperson to AllFacebook.com, is defined as “the raw number of impressions shown to users. These impressions may appear in users’ News Feeds, visits to Pages or through a Fan Box widget.”

As a marketer with a soft spot for hard metrics I’m not amped by this.  For starters, this new metric doesn’t give me unique reach, frequency, or placement.  Facebook counts impressions beneath the fold, and when the majority of these impressions are funneled through a dynamic, vertical news feed, it's probable that some of my impressions are displayed below the fold and never actually seen by the user.

Second,  I cannot measure with any certainty the number of impressions that are targeted to my intended audience (fans or friends of fans).  Whether passersby visit my publicly accessible page, or if I have a "Fanbox" widget on a site outside of Facebook, ‘Impressions’ lumps together both fans and non-fans into one big fat super-impressive number.  In a time where measuring reach and interactivity can be pinpointed to the individual user, it seems a bit archaic to use ad-based, unwashed masses metrics.  I know neither who viewed my content nor how it was viewed, if at all.

Targeted messaging and engaging opt-in consumers is a key advantage of a Facebook page as a marketing tactic, so why doesn’t Facebook let me measure that?  I’d like to see how many fans I reached, or friends of fans, and whereabouts in the news feed my status update appeared; or integrate more specific content update data into the dashboard to better measure performance and sentiment in lieu of the ambiguous ‘Post Quality.’ I could think of a laundry list of metrics I would rather have seen with this update than ‘Impressions.’  I’m disappointed.

Unfortunately Facebook plays host to more than 400 million people and as long as they provide an outlet for brands to engage with this audience, I will take whatever insights Facebook provides.  They've hinted at more sophisticated updates in the past, I just hope more of these updates are in the offing so we can stop regressing and start advancing our measurement standards.

Unfortunately, I have work to accomplish. And well, if I don’t get this left brain humming, that universe of opportunity will do me no good!

With Facebook, Tweets, IMs, SMSs, emails and good ole telephone calls, a constant barrage of information can consume our day leaving us myriad half-done tasks and unchecked to-dos. Here are a few ways of making sure you are being efficient and effective with your time, while keeping your finger on the pulse of the matrix:

1. Stop Multitasking - I know we always ask our prospective employees to be good at multitasking, but unfortunately it really is less productive.Want some research to support that? It's out there.  I thought this quote nicely sums it up:“In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages.” Fifteen minutes for a 30 second email. The moral of the story is, when you start something, finish it before you jump off to that new notification on your status bar.
2. Mind the Pareto Principle, a.k.a. the 80/20 Rule: 80 percent of the benefit comes from 20 percent of the causes. Going through your work day ask yourself, is this the most important thing I can be doing right now? Am I spending my time wisely? Don’t feel the need to be busy just to be busy, bring your focus to the 20 percent that is giving you the greatest return. Deciding what not to do may be the most important decision you can make.
3. Remember Parkinson’s Law? We learned it in college: work expands to the time available. I don’t know about you but I waited all semester to write my paper then banged it out on a caffeine-inspired all-nighter only to receive high marks. Take a look at your to-do list, what can you knock off in the matter of an hour? Do it! Then go outside and take a walk around the block to reward yourself for your hard work, and think about what you can do to capitalize on that 20 percent when you go back into the office. (A hint: if you shut off your Tweetdeck and email for that hour, you will be amazed at how much you get done.)
4. Protect the critical chain – In every process there is a set of steps that represent the minimum lead time it will take to finish a project. As you prioritize your day, keep in mind especially how your tasks affect your projects. The rule is: one minute lost for the critical chain is a minute lost for the entire system.

Last weekend, some good friends and I put this theory to work. We knew the first coat would need to dry before we applied the second coat of charismatic purple paint to the walls of my friends' new nursery. We decided that despite the fact that we were in the middle of installing the headboard, we should stop and get the critical chain rolling...and brushing, and masking. And we finished the headboard while the paint dried, adding no net time to our day of chores. Well done team.

As you tread the river of updates, be aware of your own effectiveness. Manage your multitasking by not checking your Tweetdeck every time a post comes in. Decide when to be involved with social river and when to focus on leveraging that social river. How can we tap that top 20 percent for a bigger piece of the pie?

Please, keep me posted.

Related Links:

Why Multitasking Doesn’t Work, by Mark McGuinness

The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss

When I arrived in NYC in late August of 2006 still closing the final chapter in my first start-up experience with a mobile marketing company, I was an active social network user but had no idea that my career would take a turn down the social marketing path. I'm not sure I even realized that brands were leveraging these types of networks, mediums and platforms, although perhaps at that point many of them weren't... yet.  How quickly the industry has grown. The frequency and volume at which brands have begun to adopt these non-traditional social tactics, it all feels a bit like a whirlwind. I often feel as though I've blinked and now so many of my favorite brands (some clients, some not) have begun to talk to so many of their biggest fans and foes. Really talk to them.

My educational background firmly ingrained in the world of "Public Relations" - I had grown wary of the "pitch" and the idea of trying to convince someone that whatever I was schilling was newsworthy. While I still believe that PR is an integral part of any company's overall communications strategy, especially in moments of crisis or groundbreaking news, I knew back then that I wanted to move to a more consumer centric experience - as a consumer of so much in this big new city, the foundation of so many of my decisions (where to go for a weekend getaway, what to eat, which museum to schlep up to on which days, which galleries had great opening parties) were all based in Word of Mouth - it just felt like a natural fit for me, in that time in my life. This city can be quite intimidating - I don't know what I would've done without consumer reviews of NYC 'things' and my favorite foodie blog.

I didn't know until  I started doing my homework that research companies like Forrester had been measuring the growing impact of peer recommendation and WOM for quite some time.   When I discovered that boutique agencies like Affinitive actually specialized in facilitating, measuring, and amplifying this type of brand communication - I knew what my next move had to be.

At times I feel like this industry is one big sociology experiment - what people respond to, what compels them to make that recommendation, what happens when they are jaded... how you can influence and ultimately change perceptions... it is all quite fascinating.

Three years and over 30 + programs and campaigns later I feel as though I've learned so much I could perhaps author a book. Although for every single strategy I've concepted, program I've managed, campaign I've executed, ROI I've calculated... I feel as though I've barely scratched the surface.

Perhaps that is what is so amazing about this niche in the big world of marketing - it is so new that we all can be teachers and pupils at the same time.

I intended on writing this post about my most interesting projects to date but the list became so epic it is really impossible for me to narrow it down.  Whether it was  a multi-city non-profit beach event  series or a video game fan community or the launch of a new wine varietal or an automotive focus group - they've all been fun, fascinating, and mentally rewarding. Honestly.

In a quest to find commonality and come up with some conclusion about my experience to date, I realized that the core of all of these programs is a deeply rooted foundation of listening. First, foremost, always.

Interestingly enough, my time in NYC here outside of work has taught me the very same thing - it all starts with listening. Listening to what people are saying, what your city is saying, what your stomach is saying (ha!),  what your mind and heart are telling you, from inside to out. Listening to your gut, when it tells you to follow your dreams, pack up your Volvo and move to the big city that never, ever sleeps.

One of the more commonly used functions is getInfo(), which returns almost any piece of information from a user's profile page; gender being one of them. The value returned for gender is either “Male” or “Female,” which is fine - but they are localized in the user’s language. So does this mean you have to check for “Female” if the user is using Facebook in English and “Weiblich” if the user chose German? Yes. It also means you have to check for imaginary languages. “Lass” is what you get if the user has his language preferences set to Pirate (English). You can see the headache this causes a developer if they are asked to report on the demographic of users of your app.

Another problem plaguing developers is the lack of organization for the documentation. The bulk of documentation exists on their developer wiki. This works well enough if you know exactly what you’re looking for, but if you don’t know the name of a function you’re better off using Google. A wiki format is more conducive to separate pages. So for a new developer stumbling on to the wiki, aside from a few copy-paste tutorials, there is no clear path of where to go. Only recently, with the release of their Javascript SDK, have they created a concise page containing documentation. Facebook officially supports 5 client libraries. For some of the libraries, documentation exists on the wiki and is shared amongst one another. All of the functions are typically the same for every language, so only one wiki page exists. PHP as well as Connect for the iPhone use the wiki pages, while the ActionScript library documentation is housed on Google code. This is because a lot of these libraries were contributed by the community and not officially created by Facebook, but this can be a large annoyance if you automatically assume that the function you’re using in a particular language is described by the wiki. Forcing people to scour multiple sites and forums for documentation is never a good idea if you are trying to build a good developer community around your platform.

The Facebook Platform status usually states “Facebook Platform is Healthy”. Occasionally it displays messages about performance issues, but that doesn’t help you much. Chances are, if you’re looking at Facebook platform status, you noticed the performance issues on your application. Looking at the “Average API Response Time” and “Error Count” doesn’t reveal much because there are no units on the y-axis. However looking at Developer Updates and Top Life Platform Bugs mights shed a light on the current status of Facebook. So what is the state of Facebook? Developer Update states they are changing profile picture sizes. So everyone who ever uses a profile picture in their application should go and double check that the new sizes will work. Existing Facebook applications constantly need to be updated to simply work. The bug list is as expected; there are a few major bugs, e.g. suggest to friends does not work (opened 29 December). And less critical but still annoying ones, e.g. request-form action opens a new window (opened 07 April 2009). The platform is in a state of constant flux with backwards incompatible updates being released and bugs for old features being introduced. If you create a Facebook app, you can't just “set it and forget it.” You must monitor for changes to the platform and update your app as needed. You must also expect that there will be periods where your app won't operate due to internal problems with Facebook's system.

So where does this developer hell leave us? It actually promises a brighter future. The reason the API is broken is due to Facebook constantly working on it and bringing more enhancements to users and developers. They are rolling out new features such as allowing applications to gather a user’s email if given permission and giving more control to users over their privacy settings. Yes the platform is immature, but it’s certainly not stagnant. So what can a developer do to make things smoother? There are certainly enough complaints out there, so that path won’t lead anywhere. Trying to write more on the wiki and help the community won’t be very fruitful, because the API changes quickly enough that your notes may be soon outdated. In fact, the abundance of notes like this on the wiki makes it confusing as to who is right. Here are some suggestions for developers to cope with the situation:

1. Manage your client's expectations. Make them aware that Facebook encounters issues periodically and this is out of your control. Give them the link to the Platform Live Status page so they can check that before coming screaming at you.
2. Subscribe to the Platform Live Status Feed, Developers News Feed, and Facebook Pages Notes. This way you should always be aware of a problem or an upcoming change before your client. The feeds are available via RSS or email except for the Pages Notes which seems to only be RSS.
3. Stay up to date with the Developer Roadmap in the wiki. You can create an account in the wiki and “watch” this page to get notified of changes.
4. If the client library you're using has a svn repository, you can check the log to read about changes. For example, this command works for the PHP library - svn log -v http://svn.facebook.com/svnroot/platform/clients/php/trunk/. The ActionScript library on Google code page has a web interface for browsing changes - http://code.google.com/p/facebook-actionscript-api/source/list. There are some tools for automatically getting notified of an update to the code: SVN-Monitor, CommitMonitor, and SVN Notifier. Unfortunately, these are all Windows programs. Leave a comment if you know of one for Mac or Linux (yes, we know you can easily write a cron script to do it

In summary, at this stage if someone says “We want to do this and that with Facebook,” the best thing to do is say “I can try but I make no guarantees” instead of “Sure, it’s totally possible” because with Facebook you never know if what is available today will be still available by the time your application is ready to launch.

When you are the voice of a brand, either through a blog, Twitter or Facebook, it is important to make sure that the voice is unique, polished and genuine. When interacting directly with a consumer, you need to make sure that the brand sounds like someone the consumer can trust, be friends with. You’re representing a brand, so if that brand were a person, what sort of characteristics would he/she exhibit? How would this person sound, literally?

I find that it is immensely helpful when trying to mold the voice of a brand to create a voice sheet and refer to it when blogging, tweeting or updating the Facebook status. When creating a voice sheet, think of the target consumer and try to match your voice to theirs—it would be best to read Tweets, status updates and blog posts that your target demographic has written to gain a better understanding of the type of language your consumer uses. Here are some things your voice sheet should include:

• Adjectives – List of adjectives your target commonly uses
• Key Phrases – List of key phrases or expressions used by your target
• Tone – What is the overall tone of your voice? (Example: Intelligent, humorous, approachable, youthful, worldly, etc.)
• Writing Style – When writing, should grammar be more formal or laid-back?

Remember, the key to strong, fruitful interactions with the consumer is developing an authentic voice that people will come to recognize, trust and love.