If you are looking for information on Facebook marketing, John Haydon literally wrote the book on it, as co-author of the soon-to-be released Facebook Marketing for Dummies (3rd edition). He is also a regular contribution to the Huffington Post, an instructor at MarketingProfs University, and co-founder of 501 Mission Place and SocialBrite.  We sat down with John to discuss Facebook marketing in anticipation of our upcoming free webinar Creating a Breakthrough for Your Business on Facebook on February 8^st at 1 PM EST.

What affect does Facebook page design have on increasing fans and engagement?
It’s all about maximizing your first impression to convert visitors into fans. There are two major elements that have a significant impact your initial impression, your page’s profile picture and a custom welcome page. Your main image should be designed so that the thumbnail clearly communicates who you are. The name of the page and the thumbnail are the only pieces of information most Facebook users will be able to identify you, so you have to make them count. Second, all Pages should have a custom welcome tab that’s set as the default tab for non-fans when they first arrive at the page. Studies have shown that pages with a branded welcome tab will convert fans at a 25% higher rate than Pages that do not. My favorite example of a branded welcome tab is the Dog Bless You Facebook page.

After you’ve converted a fan, the design of the Page doesn’t really matter that much. The reason why is that everything happens in the News Feed, NOT on your Facebook page. According to a study by ComScore, Facebook users are 40-150 times more likely to engage with Page content the newsfeed instead of Fan Page itself. So your main job on Facebook is to keep people interested in your organization so that they spread the good word. Your tool for doing that job is the News Feed.

What are some of your favorite Facebook campaigns designed for engagement?
I’d have to say Dog Bless You, The National Wildlife Federation and Moms Clean Air Force. Moms Clean Air Force has an amazing application that allows Facebook users to see which of their friends are most likely affected by increased toxic output from coal plants.

How is Facebook marketing different for B2B vs B2C companies?
Facebook is primarily a B2C environment. Most of the brands we interact with, like Harley Davidson and Starbucks, are trying to get our attention directly. What B2B marketers need to remember is that the decision makers they’re trying to reach are also people like you and me who use Facebook. Additionally, those decision makers flock together with other finely feathered decision makers that may already be customers. By engaging current fans with useful content, businesses can spread awareness to other decision makers at other companies.

Some of my favorite B2B companies are Get Satisfaction  and ClearRisk.  Get Satisfaction uses Facebook as a platform to provide their fans with educational content, best practices and tips, while also managing their customer relations, answering questions and addressing any issues.  ClearRisk has a great “like-gate” offering on their welcome tab, baiting new fans with a free white paper targeted at risk managers.

Finally, B2B companies need to remember that their customers are often B2C businesses and should be asking themselves, how can they help their customers achieve their goals.

For more insights from John Haydon, be sure to attend the free Awareness webinar: Creating a Breakthrough for Your Business on Facebook, on February 8^st at 1 PM EST.

You can also post your questions for John in the comment section of this blogpost, On Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  

Facebook, as we know it, has completely revolutionized the way we communicate. The tool itself has transformed how people interact, perceive others, and “develop” ourselves via cyberspace.

Nowadays, however, your behavior on the popular site can actually be categorized based on how you interpret and respond to the various medias.

A friend of mine posted this as her status the other day, and I couldn’t help but share…

17 Types of People on Facebook:

1) The “Lurker” -Never posts anything or comments on your post, but reads everything, and might make reference to your status if they see you in public.
2) The “Hyena” -Doesn’t ever really say anything, just LOLs and LMAOs at everything.
3) “Mr/Ms Popular” -Has 4…367 friends for NO reason.
4) The “Gamer” -Plays Words With Friends, Mafia Wars, Bakes virtual cakes and stuff, etc., ALL DAY, EVERYDAY.
5) The “Prophet” -Every post makes reference to God or Jesus.
6) The “Thief” -Steals status updates and posts them as their own.
7) The “Cynic” -Hates their life, and everything in it, as evidenced by the somber tone in ALL of their status updates.
The “Collector” -Never posts anything either, but joins every group, and becomes fans of the most random stuff.
9) The “Promoter” -Always sends event invitations to things that you ultimately delete or ignore.
10) The “Liker” -Never actually says anything, but always clicks the “like” button.
“Liking” all of your photos, check-ins, statuses, and new friends.
11) The “Hater” -Every post revolves around someone hating on them, and they swear people are trying to ruin their life.
12) The “Anti-Proofreader” -This person would benefit greatly from spell check, and sometimes you feel bad for them because you don’t know if they were typing fast, or really can’t spell.
13) “Drama Queen/King” -This person always posts stuff like “I can’t believe this!”, or “They gonna make me snap today!”, in the hopes that you will ask what happened, or what’s wrong but then they never finish telling the story.
14) “Womp Womp” -This person consistently tries to be funny…but never is.
15) The “News” -Always updates you on what they are doing and who they are doing it with, no matter how arbitrary.
16) The “Rooster” -Feels that it is their job to tell Facebook “Good Morning” every day.
17) The “Attention Seeker”- this is the person usually female(you know the ones) that feel it necessary to post pictures of themselves on Facebook two to three times a day in the hopes that someone will tell them they’re pretty or like the pic.. I mean come on is it really that important to get approval?

The most revealing part of that entire list is that each one of us more than likely fit into one of those categories or we will create another category as Facebook continues to evolve.

Did you know that there is an invisible, silent force that determines your Facebook success, and that mastering this force can give you an advantage over your competitors?

That force is called EdgeRank, and we sat down with Taulbee Jackson, President and CEO of Raidious, one of the leading interactive marketing companies, to discuss how marketers can harness its power. We’ll be devoting an entire hour to the subject during our webinar with him next week: EdgeRank Ninjutsu: How to Optimize Content for EdgeRank Success.

Why should marketers understand EdgeRank?

Lots of brands have invested heavily in developing audiences on Facebook – using not just technology and tools but also allocating human resources to the task. Although brands are producing content in an effort to engage with their Facebook fans, it is ultimately the EdgeRank algorithm that determines whether this content gets displayed to fans. Many companies end up spending time and money to develop their audience, but in reality only reaching a small percentage of them. Understanding EdgeRank can equip marketers with the critical insights to help them get more fans and keep them engaged over time. The long-term implications of EdgeRank are also important, particularly if a brand is integrating Facebook functionality into their site. We think EdgeRank can have more profound long-term ramifications than the Google algorithm for many marketers.

What was the most surprising fact about EdgeRank you discovered when researching for this webinar? 

The brilliance of EdgeRank and its targeting sophistication compared to that of other algorithms such as Google’s was surprising. Facebook uses a lot more and richer data than Google, analyzing and understanding relationships between key data points, which enables it to expose what’s really valuable for and relevant to its users. I was surprised to see how much Facebook cares about content quality and user engagement. They have gone to great lengths to make sure their users are not just seeing the content they know they want, but also offering content they may be interested, but didn’t know they wanted. This says a lot about Facebook’s commitment to its users. It also points to Facebook’s enormous potential to monetize their growing membership.

Google is more forward with the public when they make changes to their algorithm, while Facebook hardly every talks about EdgeRank. Why do you think that is?

Google’s algorithm has been around a lot longer, and entire industries have sprung up around understanding and utilizing that algorithm.  Google is not more transparent with their algorithm, it’s just that there are lot more SEO people monitoring it closely and sharing their insights. And because there are a lot more people focused on manipulating Google search, they have caught Google’s attention and made it important for the company to help these people understand what Google is aiming to accomplish. Google is focused on providing the best search results possible, and by sharing information about their updates, they help website publishers navigate these changes.

What are some tactics you have implemented with clients to specifically improve EdgeRank?

We have tested timing of posts and formats. As a result we have shifting our content approach to be more oriented towards rich media formats, which has been very successful for our clients. Proactively engaging communities and empowering fans to create and share their own content have also proven to be effective. The most important “tactic” for Raidious has always been treating marketing as a science experiment – test and optimize, then test and optimize some more, regardless of whether it is Facebook, email, Twitter, or blogposts. If you’re not constantly trying new things, you won’t know if you can do better.

What do you see for the future of EdgeRank?

As marketers begin to see the profound potential of the Facebook data – and the data-driven impact Facebook can have for brands, marketers will start pulling more of the Facebook data insights into their owned media properties – such as websites, mobile apps, blogs, etc. Equipped with new access to rich, meaningful user data, marketers will be able to offer deeply personalized user experiences. Facebook profiles will start to replace your email inbox, as it becomes your “key to the Internet”. Facebook is getting closer to achieving the data-driven marketer’s dream – capturing deep user preference insights that will empower marketers to connect products with both the known and unrealized needs of their target audience. Our company is one of the first of many that will focus on EdgeRank optimization as a core user engagement function, and we anticipate a new EdgeRank industry springing up similarly to the way the SEO industry has evolved.

For more insights from Taulbee Jackson, be sure to attend our free Awareness webinar on Wednesday, January 25, at 2 pm EST: EdgeRank Ninjutsu: How to Optimize Content for EdgeRank Success.

You can also post your questions for Taulbee in the comment section of this blogpost, on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

With new social media platforms emerging at such a rapid rate, it has become increasingly important for existing platforms adapt to the changing times and pull out all the stops to stay above the competition. In recent months, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have all redesigned their platforms in an effort to gain new users while maintaining their relationships with current users. While each design has its pros and cons, Twitter’s new interface not only makes it easier for new users to understand what it means to “tweet,” but it also creates a more seamless experience for seasoned users. Let’s dive into some of the specifics:

Simpler @mentioning: Twitter’s new design allows users to @mention others right from the top of users’ Twitter profiles. This feature makes it much easier to initiate conversation with a person or brand when directed to their profile from an outside site. Goes to show how a small change can make a big difference!

Improved multimedia functionality: The new Twitter makes it much easier for users to share photos and videos. Twitter now integrates these multimedia items into the main stream, making broadcasting, viewing, and interacting with multimedia on Twitter easier than ever before.

Embedded Tweets: Twitter now allows users to grab embed codes for their favorite tweets. This means that rather than taking screen shots of tweets and uploading images to our blogs and websites, we can embed tweets so that users can interact directly from our site. Test it out below!

#protip Now you can embed a Tweet right on your WordPress blog, Posterous Space, or any website. Read more: dev.twitter.com/blog/tweets-an…

— Twitter (@twitter) January 5, 2012

Brand Pages: Finally, Twitter has brand pages! These pages allow brands to add a customized banner to their Twitter profile page. This customization increases brand awareness and gives brands the ability to promote a particular phrase, image, or promotion/event. In addition, brands are able to pin tweets to the top of their pages, drawing attention to content that the brand feels is most relevant to its audience. Check out the Jet Blue brand page!

What do you think of the New Twitter? What are some pros and cons you’ve noticed?

Whether it is being distraught over the loss of a job, a financial situation, a relationship that comes to an end, bullying or other major problems in life, suicide is oftentimes a consideration for those seeing no other way out.

According to U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin’s office, approximately 100 Americans die by suicide each day, and 36,035 a year.

Social media giant Facebook is hoping that its presence on the web encourages some people considering the drastic action to take their own lives will reach out for help.

Recently, the company went public with its online program that allows users to instantaneously connect themselves to a crisis worker via Facebook’s “chat” messaging system.

The tool is being used in an effort to give desperate people a reason to think twice, especially in light of some publicized cases where people expressed their plans online to take their own lives.

While both Yahoo and Google have made available on their sites the phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline when someone is looking for information on suicide, Facebook had no such option. Now, the company’s offering gives the individual contemplating suicide the ability to immediately speak with a crisis counselor.

The system works when someone notices suicidal tendencies on an individual’s page. The person reports the item to Facebook, who in turn sends an email to the individual who posted the suicidal thought. That person is then encouraged to call the crisis hotline or hit a link where they can start a confidential chat.

According to Benjamin’s office, “Facebook and Lifeline are to be commended for addressing one of this nation’s most tragic public health programs.”

Crisis center workers will be available 24 hours a day to work with users choosing the chat option.

While some individuals have come out in saying they feel this idea leads to invasion of privacy issues, especially if someone is not serious about suicide but posting such comments anyhow, the pros far outweigh the cons as far as I can see.

Just think about it, someone using Facebook to announce they’re thinking or planning to take their own life is crying out for help.

How can you find fault with Facebook or any other such service who simply wants to give the individual something to think about, especially the fact that suicide is permanent.

Photo credit: sanjeevhimachali.com

We all wish we had a crystal ball we can peek into and tell the future.  Short of counting on miracles to lead our way, the team at Awareness connected with some of the best and the brightest in marketing to ask them the difficult questions around what 2012 has in its social marketing store for us. 34 marketing strategists – globally recognized leaders such as David Meerman Scott (@dmscott), Brian Solis (@briansolis), Erik Qualman (@equalman) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), brand marketers such as Ekaterina Walter at Intel (@Ekaterina) and Michael Pace at Constant Contact (@mpace101), and marketing advisors and consultants from top agencies such as Edelman, Mindjumpers, Holland-Mark, and Raidious, gave us their time and shared their insights and prognosis for our eBook on 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions.  We can’t thank them enough for their thoughts and support of our community.

The 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions is organized in six parts:

-        Part One: Predictions for the biggest (social) marketing developments in 2012.

-        Part Two: The role of “big data” in (social) marketing next year

-        Part Three: Expectations around key new technology that will likely have the most impact on (social) marketing in North America as well as globally;

-        Part Four: The role of mobile in (social)

-        Part Five: The top challenge for marketers engaged in social next year

-        Part Six: The top marketing news resources these experts consult to stay abreast of news and developments in social marketing

Expert Spotlight: Here’s what globally recognized marketing strategist David Meerman Scott shared with us:

-        The Biggest Social Media Development in 2012: “Social media gives us the ability to communicate instantly, yet most marketers have not developed the communication skills to address real time,” observes globally recognized marketing strategist David Meerman Scott. “Marketers have been trained with a campaign mentality, spending weeks planning, designing and executing in a sequential manner. Social marketing is changing that. We now need the ability to react instantly to breaking news, changes on our websites and negative customer feedback. Marketers need a new mentality, infrastructure and workflows to meaningfully participate in real time.”

-        The Role of “Big Data”: “Data has been with us for a long time,” observes David Meerman Scott, “but it is only recently that marketers are realizing they need sophisticated tools to harness that data and make sense and use of it. As a result, marketing departments will add a new job function that will play a role similar to that of bond traders in financial institutions in that they will rely on instant, real-time data to make informed decisions. The marketing ‘bond traders’ will be analytics experts who will look at three types of real-time data: news feeds from sources such as Dow Jones, Reuters and Bloomberg; social data from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google +, YouTube, blogs and LinkedIn; and data from websites to answer key questions such as number of people visiting your web properties, content they are interacting with, the impact of reorganizing content and presentation, and speed of response to close rates.”

-        Key New Technology to Impact Marketing in 2012: Marketing analytics. “A modern marketer going into 2012 – 2014 will need an analytics team that understands, lives and breathes data,” says David.

-        Role of Mobile on Marketing in 2012:  “Mobile devices are certainly important, and next year is going to be about the ability to add location to the mobile experience,” shares David.

How does David stay in touch with the constant changing landscape of marketing?  “Conferences,” he says“…talking to the people who are implementing innovative ideas, CMOs and CEOs, public relations and marketing agency leaders.” To read what other experts had to say about 2012, download our free eBook 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions.

David Meerman Scott

About David Meerman Scott (@dmscott ): David is a marketing strategist, seminar leader, and keynote speaker. His book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in 26 languages. David has live and worked in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Boston and has presented at hundreds of industry conferences and events in over twenty countries. Read his blog at http://www.webinknow.com.

Let us know your thoughts.  What do you think is in store for us marketers in 2012?  Where do you see the biggest opportunities?  What do you think will keep you up at night?

Let’s continue the discussion in the comments below, on Twitter at hashtag #2012Awareness, on Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices, or on LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group. To a successful 2012!

Mike Lewis
@bostonmike

Business promotion on social media channels is a bit like fitting a square peg into a round hole. The heart of the problem is that, almost without exception, the giants of social media only added the business promotion component as an afterthought.

What this translates into is frustration. Communication is harder than it should be, at every step you must employ creative hacks just to make sure that you send the right message.

The Exception to the Rule

In this entire field of mishaps, LinkedIn looks like a glowing exception. It was built to support a professional network after all. But the good news stops here. While LinkedIn does offer a great deal in terms of business connections and B2B promotion, its limited scope soon becomes apparent when you try to reach a broader public, like, let’s say, Facebook offers.

It looks like a real problem without an easy way out. So businesses continue to hack their way through and try to reach their user base. Sometimes they get successful, other times they get banned (Google+ was the main culprit here) and most of the times they fall short of succeeding.

Problem? There’s a Startup for That.

And so the story goes. Someone’s problems quite often means someone else’s opportunity. Enter ShoutOr, a small startup with some big ambitions.

Their take on the problem is to create a separate module for business tools, which include the general information, job postings and promotions. They also some very ambitious plans to blend in some localized search, Google Maps integration, possibility to accept feedback from customers and highly customizable access settings and it looks like a winner.

Well, it would be great if that would be the whole story.

Startup? There’s a Problem with That

ShoutOr’s biggest weakness is the fact that, well, they’re just getting started. All these tools sound great on paper until you realize that you also need a serious user base to make them work. The tools themselves could also use some improvement especially in regards to usability.

The way ShoutOr is dealing with this dilemma is kind of ingenious though. They basically don’t tie up the use of their tools to the use of their network. This means that businesses are allowed to generate all this neat content on ShoutOr and then use it somewhere else. For the tools where that’s not really a possibility, like polls and customer feedback they adopted the tried and tested approach of 3rd party login.

Why You Should Give ShoutOr a Try

This little network could very well be the next big thing going or just as easy it could be another of those startups nobody will remember one year from now. Either way it just makes sense to get in early and establish a presence. This way, if it does become successful you will suddenly have a big advantage over your competition.

It is safe to say that social media giant Facebook was rather red in the face recently when it was discovered that a large number of pornographic and violent images were posted to its family-friendly site.

Coming in the forms of pictures, links and videos involving well-known celebrities, the content hit Facebook on Nov. 14, leading a Facebook spokesperson to tell the media, “We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue. We are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms. Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us.”

Tech experts report the swarm of unwanted images seemed to be tied to a form of spam virus that propagates when an unknowing users taps into the infected content.

In an ironic twist, many disgruntled Facebook users turned to rival Twitter to express their dissatisfaction with what occurred.

In a company blog on the web security site Sophons, a senior tech consultant stated, “It’s (spam virus) precisely this kind of problem which is likely to drive people away from the site. Facebook needs to get a handle on this problem quickly, and prevent it from happening on such a scale again.”

Just who is the cause behind the problem remains to be seen, but there has been some talk recently of planned attacks against the site which boasts more than 700 million users worldwide.

A hacking group known as Anonymous had made threats several months back to silence Facebook on Nov. 5, but that date has obviously come and gone without major incident, leaving those investigating scratching their heads.  As of Nov. 15, there was no mention on the Facebook blog regarding the issue.

While Facebook typically relies on users to flag down inappropriate content, this is not the first time images depicting pornography have appeared on the site.

That being the case, one would hope Facebook techs are feverishly working on putting together photo recognition software that picks up on porn and other unwanted images.

Given the fact that recent reports show more and more children are gaining access to Facebook at a younger age than previously thought, the social media giant needs to face up to the issue of unwanted content ending up in the wrong hands, or in this case, eyes.

Photo credit: hackingthenet.blogspot.com

1. Profile Picture

What is Smile Tagging you ask?

How does it work?

Click below and see for yourself:

What’s the value Prop?

In short, Smile Tagging humanizes the Facebook “like” process even more as well as the interaction with the brand itself. This new app allows customers to  tag and explore content through real smiles. Not only will there be real smiles, but they will be linked to relevant content, which is shared on the KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese Dinner Facebook page.

Value = true engagement and relationships with potential and current customers.

Value = showing the brand is more than just a name.

Value = converting potentials to customers and making more loyal ones.

Why is it a brand win?