We all know over time that things come and go. That being said, could you imagine a world one day without Facebook?

When you add up the numbers, approximately 900 million people worldwide utilize Facebook, with the company’s Q1 revenue for 2012 alone more than $1 billion.

Impressive numbers to say the least, but of course the world had been around for centuries and centuries before Mark Zuckerberg and the social media giant became a part of our everyday fabric less than a decade ago. With that being the case, don’t just assume that we’ll be sharing things on Facebook with friends, family and co-workers for many decades to come.

Number of Challenges for Facebook

According to a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll, Americans are proving a tad ambivalent about Facebook, showing that the company is looking at a number of challenges as it looks to bring in additional revenue growth via its huge user base.

The poll sample of just more than 1,000 American adults (56 percent had a Facebook profile, 40 percent did not, while 4 percent did not know), shows that 71 percent of individuals under age 35 sport a favorable view of the site compared to 28 percent of senior citizens. The poll points out that Google, Apple and Microsoft are seen as better sites than is Facebook, while Twitter received less favorable reviews.

Among individuals reporting they did not use Facebook (it was not clear whether this also includes individuals with profiles), a total of 57 percent indicated they either lacked interest or actively did not like the company.

When it comes to e-commerce on Facebook, 36 percent report they thought they were “extremely” or “somewhat safe” buying goods through the site. Meantime, 54 percent indicated they felt “not at all safe.” As for ad-related or sponsored clicks, 83 percent reported they “hardly ever or never” clicked on Facebook ads or sponsored content, with 17 percent claiming they did “often or sometimes.”

What may be the most interesting finding from the survey is the thought of Facebook, which makes the bulk of its money from selling advertisements, as an investment, along with its longevity and revenue futures.

According to nearly half of those responding, Facebook “will fade away as new things come along.” Even more interesting, was the fact that “Although they are generally more positive about the company, younger adults are no more apt than their older counterparts to expect Facebook’s long-term success.”

The poll also looked at the trust issue between users and the company, another feature that did not paint the social media leader in an exactly positive light. A mere 13 percent “completely trust” Facebook, as three of five Facebook users indicate they have little or no faith the site will protect their personal data, while 28 percent “somewhat trust” it.

The survey comes on the heels of the company’s initial public offering (IPO) of stock, with half of Americans claiming Facebook’s proposed asking price is too large.

So, take a moment to think about Facebook from your perspective:

• Do you regularly, somewhat or never use Facebook?
• If Facebook went away tomorrow, would you be upset, happy or indifferent?
• Do you feel Facebook is overrated or underrated as a major social media player?

Photo credit: thenextweb.com

Dave Balter is a man who needs no introduction. As CEO of BzzAgent, a company that connects brands with over 400 million global brand advocates and author of two word-of-mouth marketing books, there’s hardly a person better suited to speak on influence and word-of-mouth (WOM). We recently caught up with Dave to interview him for our latest e-book, 3 Keys to Influence: Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital, and talk about influence and how marketers can leverage it.

Dave defines influence as the “ability to motivate others to take an action.” He notes influence also incorporates elements of reach and amplification – as those with influence know key people and can communicate effectively with them to drive action. According to Dave, the way to most successfully harness influence is to create advocates out of those with influence, as WOM marketing is made even more powerful when it begins with an influential voice.

In order to leverage influence, marketers must provide their brand advocates with the tools and insights needed to influence others. Brand advocates, Dave feels strongly, must be brand users. A brand advocate must have first-hand experience to effectively communicate and influence others. We differ a bit here, as I believe advocates can come from outside of one’s customer base. However, we agree that no matter how you identify and motivate influencers, you must do it in a transparent and honest manner. Marketers must be upfront with those they are engaging.

We live in an era where peer-to-peer marketing is a critical component of our campaigns, but challenging to pull through. To that end, Dave shares two key tips for influencer engagement strategy.

1)     Be upfront with your ask. A critical component of getting someone to take an action is to invite them in a transparent way. Reach out to your target influencers and invite them to be a part of your campaign (e.g. your innovative new strategy, or cool product launch). They can’t advocate for you without being asked. Plus, Dave adds, people love feeling specially selected.

2)     Appropriately equip advocates with actions that will create activation. Once you’ve asked your influencers to participate, you need to tell them how to help. Clearly identify the right tool to motivate your audience to take an action, whether that’s a tangible item, like coupons to distribute, or knowledge that’s worth sharing and communicating.

Dave believes measuring influence and measuring return on advocacy campaigns are different. If you are identifying influencers, there are tools like Klout, PeerIndex and Traackr. To measure return on WOM and advocacy, marketers need measure it the same ways they measure traditional marketing campaigns. For BzzAgent, the leading company that utilizes a global network of advocates to create value for brands, that means tying campaign performance directly to purchases.

Dave is confident that the industry is increasingly moving towards tying social with purchasing behavior. We are moving away from ‘squishy’ metrics to ones that are measurable and defensible, complementary to metrics marketers use in traditional campaign measurement. You can expect to see more marketers measuring sales during the time an advocacy campaign is running.

Those looking to grow their own influence, Dave advises, need to focus on growing their reach, or the number of people with whom you’re able to communicate, and their credibility with those people, generally achieved through creating and sharing high-quality content. For more on growing and leveraging insights, as well as even more tips from Dave, download our latest e-book 3 Keys to Influence: Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital.

Marketers, do you agree brand advocates can only be customers? What are your best practices for growing and nurturing your brand’s influence? Share your tips and thoughts with us and our community on Twitter by tweeting to #AwarenessTips.

Mike Lewis

@bostonmike

As social media sites continue to emerge as the basis of connectivity among marketers, so does the demand for fresh content. However, do you ever feel like it takes too much time to jump from site-to-site in order to update? Luckily, software developers are already one step ahead with their brilliant mobile and desktop applications.

Until recently, I’ve never been Pinterested, Get Gluey, Google Plusified, Spotified, Tumbly or Youtubed… On the other hand, I can say I’ve been an active Facebooker, Tweeter, Instagramer, and FourSquare-er. But really, who has time to go through and update all of their social networks while navigating through this busy and crazy life we all live?

Well, as social media sites continue to aggregate my biggest recommendation for staying abreast with your updates is to select a few desktop or mobile applications that serve as your “Go-Tos,” where you can easily update all sites with one update.

Desktop Apps

For me, I really enjoy Facebook and Twitter. So, if I’m going to be doing a lot of work pushing out content for those two platforms, I utilize Tweetdeck from my desktop. You can download the mobile version as well, but the desktop version helps me to respond to people quicker and in real time. If I’m going to be analyzing this data, I utilize the desktop application, Social Bro. It provides simple up-to-date reports on who I’m connecting with, who is in their network, and where they are. There’s also more analytical data you can choose from based on your preferences.

Mobile Apps

As far as social mobile applications, Echofon, Hootsuite, and Tweetcaster and among my top three. Echofon and Tweetcaster are good because they allow you to easily, “Retweet with Comment” when replying to someone. Twitterlingo can be confusing. Therefore if you have the capability of showing your recipient what exact tweet you’re referring to by including it in YOUR tweet, then your conversations will run much smoother.  Hootsuite is awesome because you can post to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Linked In simultaneously, eliminating the need for jumping from site-to-site-to-site.

Stay Connected

Finally, I believe that as more of these types of applications continue to emerge it is important to connect all networks in the settings utility. Therefore, you only have to do one update for multiple networks. This is beneficial because if you’re promoting a product and someone sees it on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, they are more likely to check it out versus only one social site.

In a digital world driven by social outlets, marketers must utilize their ability to expand their reach for potential B2B and B2C clients.

1. Yandex (YNDX) -20.8% from its IPO Price

19. FriendFinder (FFN) +0.7%

FriendFinder, the publisher of Penthouse magazine and operator of websites like AdultFriendFinder.com and Cams.com, went public in 2011 after backing out from an IPO the year before.

20. Bazaarvoice (BV) +1.26%

Bazaarvoice, the ratings, reviews and social commerce software provider out of Austin, Texas has a virtual monopoly on its market. As long as Yelp doesn’t encroach on markets like coolers (Rubermaid) and electronics (Best Buy) Bazzarvoice should remain strong (full disclosure – I’m on the Advisory Board for BV).

Facebook IPO? Only time will tell if the Facebook IPO is a success

Related Articles: Social Media Success Pippa Middleton

Bing announced today it is changing the search game. As discussed in my best selling book Socialnomics (2009) the ultimate winner between Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple may hing on which company figures out social search.

Social Search: The New Frontier

Microsoft and Bing are going all in on social search and why not? Google has already defeated them on the traditional search front. As an investor in Facebook, Microsoft can do what Google cannot, integrate deeply with Facebook. I’ve been harsh on Facebook in their inability or even lack of desire to improve their search functionality. Facebook could own this new market of social search, but perhaps, behind closed doors they have been working with Microsoft to partner on developing the social search market. Social Search will eventually replace search as we know it. Will it also cause the replacement of Google?

The New Bing

“The New Bing”, includes a sidebar to better understand what your friends like and don’t like. View the video below or on www.bing.com/explore/new to see how this works.

Social Search

If you’d like to be a beta user of “The New Bing” then you need to go to http://www.bing.com/new and submit your e-mail and they will send you an invitation when it is ready in the coming days.

The new experience will consist of three parts:

The New Bing is transforming search through integration with industry leading companies such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Quora to bring in the best information from across the web and social networks, and present it in a way that makes sense. The new Bing will be comprised of three distinct columns:

· Core Web Results: Relevant, Comprehensive, Trustworthy

Bing will continue to deliver relevant, comprehensive and trustworthy results. Core web results on Bing make it easy to focus on the links you need to get things done, without the clutter of social updates.

Bing hopes to change the search game with it's New Bing which will focus on Social Search.

· Snapshot: Get It Done Faster

Bing is helping you take action and complete tasks faster with the new snapshot pane. Located between the web results on the left and the new sidebar on the right, snapshot brings relevant information and services to your search, including maps, restaurant reservations and reviews. Through partnerships with industry leading companies such as Yelp, Open Table and Fansnap, Bing is helping you do more and get things done faster.

· Sidebar: Social Search Done Right

Bing believes that connecting you with people who can help you with your task is a natural step in the evolution of search – one that simplifies actions you take today like asking friends for recommendations – while unlocking useful knowledge from your social networks. With sidebar, Bing is bringing together the best of the web and letting you share, discover and interact with friends like you do in real life.

o Ask Friends: As you search, you can post questions to get help from your Facebook friends. You can also “tag” friends Bing suggests might know more about the topic.

o Friends Who Might Know: Bing suggests friends on Facebook who might know about the topic so you can go quickly from searching to doing. Suggestions are based on what they “like”, their Facebook profile information, or photos they have shared, allowing you to easily ask them about relevant experiences and opinions.

o People Who Know: The new Bing also identifies top experts and enthusiasts from leading networks like Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, LinkedIn Google Plus and Blogger, so you can do more.

o Activity Feed: In the sidebar activity feed, you can see real-time posts and queries, answer friends’ questions and “like” interesting posts. Since these activities show up in both Bing (activity feed) and Facebook, you can comment on them from either place.

o Always present, never intrusive: The sidebar, located on the right, will appear as part of ever query, allowing searchers to decide when/how to interact with it.

In the coming days we will beginning rolling out the new experience in the United States. To be among the first to preview the new feature, visit http://www.bing.com/new.

Social Search: Bing's new social search (New Bing) is its most innovative endeavor since it's launch 3 years ago

Now you can donate your social capital too

You can donate clothes, canned goods, old eyeglasses and even your rusty ’87 Yugo to charity. Now a growing number of causes are urging donors to chip in their unused Twitter characters, too.

It works like this: send a tweet through special app, and any unused space is filled up with a public-service announcement like “Support injured servicemen and women” and a link to the charity.

Groups are using it to drum up support for Japanese earthquake relief, fair trade efforts and – this month – the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps injured veterans.

“Many people add a bumper sticker to their car or wear an advocacy bracelet to show their support of a specific cause,” said Pam Wickham, vice president of communications for Raytheon, which is funding the Wounded Warrior effort.  “But stickers and bracelets only have an effect on people who are actually there to see them. Social media advocacy has no limits — and better yet, it gets people actually engaged in your cause.”

Last year an ice cream company used the concept to promote May 14’s World Fair Trade Day. A website counter showed a running tally of donated characters.

The Japan Up relief campaign took a more visual tack, posting a graphic of a tattered Japanese flag that was slowly restored as people donated characters.

The idea is to contribute “social capital” as a kind of free publicity, said Mark Wilson of the Boston Group, which designed the Raytheon campaign.

“You’re basically donating your influence,” Wilson said. “It’s a very powerful indicator of participation.”

The Raytheon campaign, called Hashtags for Heroes, adds mobile applications for the Android, Blackberry, iPhone and iPad.

Campaign targets multiple platforms

The Boston Group built the app in-house over 3½ months, Wilson said.

The Apple app store took about a week to test and approve the iPhone app. Approval from the Android and Blackberry app stores three or four days, Wilson said. None of the stores asked for any changes.

Programmers also built a set of browser plug-ins and a website. Stephanie Schierholz, a former NASA social media manager recently hired by Raytheon, helped guide the writing of 133 standardized tweets for the program.

Ads in Defense News, Politico, and the websites of the Wall Street Journal, the National Journal and Roll Call urge readers to download the apps. A video available on YouTube shows users how to use them.

Raytheon launched the program on May 3 and collected more than 87,000 characters in the first week. The company has also built a microsite featuring profiles of veterans, interviews, slideshows and a counter showing the total of donated characters.

“I think we’re at the beginning of a trend,” Wilson said. “In this day and age, that’s what it’s all about – connecting with as many people as possible with as great a frequency as possible, so that people learn more about this cause.”

The New England Patriots support #HT4H

While there’s no receipt and you can’t write it off on your taxes, these twitter donations can be just as powerful as cash, Wickham said. “Awareness and advocacy are powerful motivators in any community, and the online community is no different. “We’d love to see not just thousands of characters donated, but thousands of new supporters of the Wounded Warrior Project That’s the power of social media.”

You would think that when it comes to social media sites like Facebook, the people who use them are, well, socializing, right? Well, apparently not everyone is in a particularly social mood when they log in. Via Christine Kane of Internet Service Providers, here are 10 ways that people use Facebook to spy on others:

1. Checking Out Their Profile – Unless your privacy preferences are set accordingly, your personal info is not private. It requires action on the member’s part to safeguard from public view what that member wants to keep to herself, or limit to friends.
2. Friending – Once a person has become a friend on Facebook, they can keep tabs on your status and posts fairly simply. The tendency to automatically friend someone who friends them can open doors that best remain shut.
3. Fake Profiles – If someone wants to spy on another, and cannot expect to be friended using their actual persona and avatar, they might create a new one that appears less objectionable. This is one way of circumventing privacy settings, and another is …
4. Spoof Profiles – it’s also possible to use the same name as another of the person’s friends to create an entirely new profile. They can select a friend on their list whose profile suggests a limited use of Facebook (ie, no profile photo, little personal info provided on profile), and pose as that other friend on a different account, adding mutual friends to the new profile as well.
5. Friending Your Friends – It’s not uncommon for members to confirm friendships with unknown people based purely on the fact that they have mutual friends. So, the logic goes, they must be OK. Not necessarily.
6. Sending Gifts – It’s just a friendly gesture in most cases, but it also opens your private info up to access by the 3^rd party app that the gift was sent through. This in turn leaves your private info open to sharing with others who may want to access that info too.
7. Reading posts – Although someone may not have access to your profile directly, they may be able to keep tabs on you through your friends’ walls and tagged photos.
8. Adding an RSS Feed – In order to continuously keep up with your status, it’s possible for a member to simply add your updates and posts to their feed and then see whenever you are logged in, right from their desktop or website.
9. Send a Message – Social engineering attempts to gain access to private info works essentially the same. In this case, Facebook provides the option of sending a message to someone who isn’t already a friend. It’s the first step toward gaining someone’s trust.
10. Instant Personalization – Apps and programs that can be linked to your Facebook profile, are another means for others to spy on you. For instance, you’re reading a news article online and wish to make a comment. The website offers you the option of logging in, using your Facebook profile. Non-members can access your profile by following the link from your user name.

Source: Internet Service Providers

With 90 percent of purchases subject to social influence, it’s no surprise that savvy marketers are looking to leverage social influencers to increase sales and awareness. Influence is the single most effective and most enduring marketing asset. To help shed some light on the subject, our latest white paper, the 3 Keys to Influence: Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital gives marketers a framework for maximizing their social influence strategy by specifically, outlining steps to leverage both internal and external brand advocates. Here’s an infographic we put together to give you some key insights from the white paper.

As part of our interview series on effective use of social media marketing, I recently caught up with Travis Unwin, Director of Media Strategies for one of Awareness’ partner agencies Sitewire, a full service digital marketing and interactive advertising agency.  The agency now counts more than sixty consultants who provide their clients with the necessary tools to successfully engage their customers in the digital space. Sitewire’s client roster is full of leading brands including Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Sears, The Capital Grill, and Sage. Additionally, Sitewire works closely with a variety of technology partners like LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo!, Yelp and YouTube, to develop innovative solutions for their clients. Travis shared some of his team’s best practices for social media strategy and engagement.

When it comes to creating social engagement, Travis and his team follow these rules:

1. Be Empathic —The secret to successful social engagement is empathy. In the era of real-time conversations, engagement starts with participating in the customer dialog. According to Travis, the first priority for social teams is to take care of the customer – “we are responsible for the voice of the customer, and customer service is responsible for the voice of the client.” This is why Sitewire’s consultants share diverse backgrounds – marketing, consumer psychology and customer service.

1. Don’t “Post and Walk” — It is all about the dialog and building meaningful relationships with your customers, says Travis. Your social followers respond within the first hour of your posting, so “don’t expect to share interesting content at 9 p.m. if you are not going to be there to reply to comments.”

1. Be Consistent — As with any relationship, consistency in posting and sharing content on social channels is key to a brand’s ongoing success.  Once customers see brands posting with a certain frequency, they will expect brands to continue to deliver with the same frequency.  Change your posting routine and be prepared for the ensuing backlash. That said, a brand can choose to be “consistently inconsistent”. The important takeaway is that brands need to realize they are in the business of consistently meeting customer expectations.

1. Add Variety — Social content needs be a mixture of transactional and community-driven posts. Interactive polls and “fill-in-the-blanks” quizzes are among the most engaging content that keeps your customers coming back.

1. Track Success —Travis will be the first to tell you that tracking the success of your social campaigns is the recipe for long-term success.  His team is adamant about tracking customer interactions and needs and feeding that insight back to their clients so brands can improve their products, delivery, and overall customer experience.  In addition, Sitewire tracks a wide spectrum of sales-related data from social and web channels, although, as Travis says, we are still early in our ability to understand the full social impact on sales.

Remember that the best place to start your social engagement strategy is by first examining your business goals and objectives. As a socially-savvy marketer should, Travis sees the job of his team at Sitewire as business strategists first, with an eye towards how social marketing can support these objectives.

For more on Travis you can visit his very successful alter ego – Evo Terra.  Evo Terra, Travis’ pen name, came into existence in 2002 to “help authors and publishers be even more awesome.” Co-founder of Podiobooks and ePublishUnum, Evo has managed to help a number of authors along the way, while also successfully bringing to market the podcasting best-seller Podcasting for Dummies.

Tweet us your top engagement tips!

Help share the knowledge. Share your top social media engagement tips with us and our community on Twitter by tweeting to #AwarenessTips.

Mike Lewis

@bostonmike

You are running a small business that seems to be stuck in neutral and you can’t quite figure out why that is. If that’s the case, have you checked to see whether or not you’re being social enough?

For the successful small business person, he or she has gravitated toward and not away from social media as part of their online market scheme, especially given the fact that more and more consumers are using social media in their everyday lives.

With a successful social media campaign, small businesses can bring more traffic to their site, boost branding awareness of the products and/or services they offer, and build a relationship with both present and potential customers.

According to research (2,200 interviews of business owners and major executives at companies with fewer than 500 employees) provided earlier this year at the “Insights: Small Business Summit” in Northern California, approximately 80 percent of small business owners and high-level executives report they now utilize a social network, however only 57 percent report doing so as a component of a marketing plan.

The research noted:

• LinkedIn was most utilized for business purposes (50 percent) and the least in regards to personal usage by major executives (9 percent);
• Twitter gets the second highest usage by businesses (38 percent) and third highest when it comes to personal reasons (21 percent);
• Google+ saw the third most usage for business (26 percent) and the second most utilization for personal purposes (26 percent);
• Facebook received the least amount of business usage (12 percent) and most utilization for personal reasons (30 percent).

In the event you have been slow to the dance when it comes to social media usage for your small business, keep these things in mind:

• Use social media to promote events – Social media is a great venue to promote events involving your company. If you are holding an upcoming sale, have promotional items the public should know about, seminars etc., make sure the word gets out on your Facebook fan page, Twitter page, Google+ page, Pinterest, any YouTube presence you have and more. The pages can and should also be used to share industry related information with consumers. In the event you run a small business that promotes healthy ways of life, use your social media connections to make note of when you’re running seminars on healthy eating and working out, etc.
• Use social media to link to worthwhile news – Your business that promotes healthy means by which to live should use social media to link to studies and research on how to eat better, exercise better, monitor one’s health, etc. If your business is sponsoring an event to test people’s cholesterol for example, use social media to spread the word about who, what, where and when.
• Use social media to network with others – Given that networking is a major part of successfully promoting one’s business, social media plays an important role here. While you are not out to give your competition free advertising, it essentially comes down to scratching their backs while they do the same for you when it is a win-win proposition for everyone involved. This is also true with those that do not compete with you. The realtor that is asking for a little plug on your social media channels will hopefully be willing to do the same on his or her venues to promote your business.

At the end of the day, you may be surprised the positive return on investment (ROI) you receive from using social media to promote your small business.

Plus the fact, being a social business owner is sure better than being anti-social.