Leverage Social Media By Knowing Which Network To Use

Wordless Wednesday Post: 

Facebook Buys Instagram: Smart Move

Facebook Introduces New "List" Feature

by Ashley Haugen
@AshleyKaia

Facebook announced today a new feature that allows users to create "interest" lists for brands, groups and public figures. It's a nice feature, and offers a convenient space to view content tailored to your liking. Similar to Social Reader, Facebook Lists gives you third-party content, except it is all housed within Facebook.

With Facebook Lists, users can subscribe to lists from other users, or create their own. The process is incredibly simple. I had a list titled "social media news" up and running in under 5 minutes. Within this list are updates from sources like Mashable, TechCrunch and Adage.

Lists can either be made private or public, the latter showing up in the News Feed. There are additional controls for users to select what type of stories to include or exclude in the feed. For example, you can select to see only photos from a page or only music and videos from a public figure.

I find it another nice tool for content curation, albeit thinly veiled behind Facebook's true goal of keeping you on the site for as long as possible. Of course the longer you're on the site, the more appealing Facebook advertising becomes. However, the feature is so nice I can almost ignore the sound of ad dollars cashing in.

I am always grateful to find new, efficient ways of curating information that is tailored to my needs. As any social media manager will tell you, finding quality content is half the battle. This feature provides an individualized tool to help connect with the information you want.

Have you checked out Facebook Lists? What do you think? Would you use it?

The Time Has Come: Transitioning Facebook Brand Pages to Timeline

by Shelly Gustafson

22 days and counting. Time is quickly running out for brands to make a seamless transition from traditional brand Facebook pages to the new Timeline Facebook Brand Pages. The drop date when Facebook will automatically switch all pages is Friday, March 30th. Brands better plan and adapt now, because there is no way around it.

Top three changes with Timeline:

Photos Front and Center
Graphic-friendly brands rejoice. Timeline allows for additional graphics and large beauty shots to take over your main-page and attract new and old fans alike (Top display photo is a maximum 851x315 pixels or a minimum of 399 pixels wide).

Highlighting Content
Not all content is created equal. A huge benefit on the Timeline design is that admins can now highlight content they want to showcase (larger photo, top billing etc.). Page admins can use this feature strategically to get the most out of fan comments and great posts.

Admin Panel
It’s never been easier to administer over a Facebook Brand page. Rather than taking you to a separate page, the admin panel simply drops down for easy access when needed. Among the panel is a listing of new likes, snapshot of reach, and post volume.

While timeframe may be daunting there is still time to create a beautiful page. Here are a few tips to get you started: 

1. Check out what other brands have done already. Several brands have jumped the gate and gotten their designs out early. Check out their pages for ideas before you commit to anything yourself (a few examples are: Coca Cola, Ben & Jerry’s and Starbucks). 

2. Don’t wait for March 30. You can choose to update to timeline anytime between now and then if you are ready. Additionally, you can utilize the preview button to create your page and tweak it before the deadline hits. This great feature allows you (and your admins) to test out ideas and designs before your page goes live (just make sure to not hit the “publish now” button until you are ready).

3. Plan out your main photo. What are you hoping to display to visitors with one glance – usefulness, lightheartedness, playfulness or seriousness? Whatever you wish to convey create an image that imparts that and test it out for feedback prior to launch. 

4. Tabs are gone but apps are here to stay. Everything will be cleanly housed on the main page and apps will be housed on the bottom right side of the cover photo (only four will be automatically viewable at a given time though more can be accessed when clicked). In other words, pick the four that are the most important to you and grow from there. 

5. Create an editorial calendar for the next month. While all social media should be in part determined by what is happening in the moment, it is always a good idea to have at least a minimal plan. This will keep the updates going when you hit your busy season and can no longer dedicate hours to content creation.

At Axiom we strive to not only be on the cutting edge with our own in-house social media but to guide our clients through this often daunting and ever changing landscape. If the process is too daunting for you at the moment we encourage you to reach out to a designer, social media expert or marketing team you know and trust rather then pulling the plug on your existing page.

And check out Techcruch’s article for more great ideas on managing the transition.

Video Post: Quora's Success is a Question that Remains to be Answered

In today's Daily Axioms video post, Steve discusses how the Q&A site Quora overhauled itself in 2011 by borrowing elements from other social networks:

Where will social media go in 2012 and beyond?

Just a year or two ago, it was common to see "emerging media" as an alternative buzzword for social media. At the time, it made sense. Facebook was still skyrocketing in popularity, and new social networks were popping up every week.

But now that 2012 is here, it's safe to say that social media is no longer "emerging" and has fully arrived. And while some analysts claim the social media phenomenon is just a bubble waiting to burst, new Facebook statistics from TechCrunch show that the growth may have slowed, but it hasn't stopped.

According to their numbers from comScore, Facebook had 15 million new visitors in 2011 compared to almost 50 million in 2010. This highlights the fact that social media is now in a gradual growth stage, and not the exponentially fast growth stage it had been for years.

An article in ReadWriteWeb dove into this a little deeper, gleaning that the statistical focus will shift from the number of users on various sites to the engagement on those sites. "How much time?" will replace "how many users?" as investors, speculators and pundits look to see who's dominating our online lives.

The main reason for this is that social media across the board, especially Facebook, has more or less reached a saturation point. Echoing many people's complaints when Google+ first hit the scene, most users don't want to add to the long list of channels to keep track of. They are set in their social networking ways, and are now looking for new apps and devices to supplement those social networks.

For marketers, this means we have to move beyond where people are at and start looking at how they are using those social media channels. Regardless, it's good to see that social media continues to become more and more integrated into our daily lives.

Innovative Recruitment Tool: The Social Interview

There's a lot you can learn from looking at a person's Facebook profile. What was their last status update? Are there incriminating photos? What brands and causes do they like? And most tellingly, what do their friends say about them?

Now, recruiters at R/GA have a tool to answer that last question. The digital advertising agency has created an app that places the interview right on a candidate's Facebook profile. As part of the interview process, hopeful interns have three questions posted to their profile for their Facebook friends to answer. Take a look at the video below to see it in action:

I'm not quite sure if this would make me more nervous or not. After all, it's the living, breathing embodiment of the peer review, and positive feedback from an outside source is invaluable. However, leaving the fate of your internship in the hands of your friends is quite the trust-fall.

Either way, it's one more way that recruiters are leveraging social media for their employment needs. 

Facebook "friends" Gowalla to bolster location features

It's no secret that Facebook, despite its social media prowess, has struggled in the location-based social networking. It's Facebook Places feature has been underwhelming to say the least, and is far from a Foursquare-killer.

In what appears to be an effort to possibly grow that location-based service, Facebook announced today that it bought out Gowalla. Facebook has already said that the Gowalla management team will be integrated into Facebook's staff, and the service will be shut down in January.

Seeing as how Gowalla is was the third biggest player in the location-based game, it's safe to say that it is now a two-horse race between Facebook and Foursquare.

However, Gowalla made it clear that Facebook didn't buy any user data, and that existing users will be able to export their information before the shutdown.

It will be interesting to see what direction both companies go now that they are dominating the market, given that the social media buzz hasn't been surrounding location-based marketing for some time now.

The newest Facebook change appeals to the novelist in all of us

If Twitter's approach to communication in the digital age is short and sweet, it's safe to say that Facebook is trying to establish itself on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Facebook just announced they are once again increasing the maximum character limit for status updates to over 60,000 characters.

To put the new 63,206 character limit in perspective, it's the equivalent to just over 451 tweets! In fact, I'd be able to post this Daily Axioms blog (title and all) more than 44 times in a single status update!

As I alluded to earlier, this is hardly the first time Facebook has increased how much users can post per status update. Here's a quick timeline of the changes:

• Facebook's launch through March 2009: A Twitter-esque 160 characters.

• March 2009-July 2011: More than doubles to 420 characters.

• July 2011-September 2011: Facebook adds an extra half-tweet's worth to make it an even 500 characters.

• September 2011-November 2011: A huge 1000% increase, allowing for 5,000 character updates.

• Today: This latest spike brings the total to 63,206 characters per update.

Granted, just because people can post over 60,000 characters doesn't mean they will. More importantly, will there be a user backlash from news feeds clogged with posts that are long enough to be printed and bound in a library?

How do you feel about Facebook's latest update?

Facebook's New Frictionless Sharing Rubs Many the Wrong Way

While many people questioned the visual overhaul of Facebook's Timeline design, the real Facebook uproar lately has been focused on its new Seamless Sharing system.

Seamless, or frictionless, sharing automatically posts updates about the apps you're using within Facebook. Listen to a song on Spotify or read an article on Yahoo through Facebook and it'll update automatically to all of your friends.

Naturally, the thought of posting on your own wall without control created quite a backlash, with many social media pundits declaring the feature a violation of privacy and just plain wrong.

However, there's also been a backlash to backlash, with others claiming that the Seamless Sharing system has simply redefined the concept of "sharing" rather than ruin it. They say that the frictionless sharing isn't perfect, but could be made better with stronger filtering instead of getting rid of it outright.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the automatic updates because of how much they dominate my news feed. But to those who are uncomfortable with having their media consumption habits strewn about Facebook, there's an easy solution: Don't use the services within Facebook. I use both Spotify and Yahoo News fairly regularly, but I use them outside of Facebook.

What do you think? Has Seamless Sharing ruined Facebook sharing, or simply added a new dimension to it?

Facebook Friday: It's All in the Numbers

The average U.S. Facebook user spends 7 hours and 46 minutes per month on Facebook. Are you one of them? How about a fan of one of the top five brand pages on Facebook? If it's Coca-Cola, Disney or Starbucks you like, then consider yourself part of the club. Check out today's infographic for more Facebook facts.

Share Mobile Videos with Klip

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Alain Rossman has another hit on his hands. In the mid '90s, he predicted that people would eventually use their phones for e-mail. As chairman of Vudu, he developed and commercialized a TV set-top box that streamed HD movies over the internet, which sold to Wal-Mart in 2010.

The latest hit from Rossman's Palo Alto-based firm is called Klip, which just released an iPhone app designed for organizing, searching and sharing video. The app is interesting, and offers one of the best user experiences out there. A swipe of your finger enables you to preview the video thumbnails. A shake of your iPhone enables you to fast-forward. It's easy to record footage from Klip, add video from another app, trim, and share via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or email. Klip also enables you to geotag the video and add hashtags.

For those who need a quick and easy way to shorten and upload videos for blogs or news stories, Klip is sure to please. Klip is available free of charge at the app store.

Facebook Friday: Timeline to be a Major Profile Overhaul

People have not stopped talking about the changes Facebook unveiled at yesterday's f8 conference. Granted, even the smallest announcement from the social networking giant spurs plenty of conversation, but the features Mark Zuckerberg revealed are definitely worth the buzz.

I covered the initial changes (the Ticker and Top News feed) Facebook already leaked in yesterday's post, but the most noteworthy announcement from yesterday was the Timeline feature.

The Timeline will eventually replace the current profile page, and is both a visual and conceptual overhaul.

The idea is that the Timeline would curate all of your past Facebook activity into a scrapbook of the most important moments. It's still in developer mode and not open to the public yet, but I took a screenshot of my profile so you can see what it would be like:

As you can see, the profile picture setup has changed. Instead of the 180x540 pixel size, you now have the square thumbnail picture and the giant Cover Photo. Also, the two column approach to the main section is also a big departure from the old profile setup.

Visually, there is a lot more real estate to work with, which is great news for designers and the artistically-inclined. It'll be a while until these new changes go into affect for everyone, but it'll be a dramatic change for the 800 million Facebook users.

Facebook: Social Media's Jack of All Trades, Master of None

After spending a week in Boise, ID on vacation, I come back home to find some pretty dramatic changes to Facebook's home page.

Aside from the slightly darker blue border on top (the first thing I noticed), the biggest change is addition of a timeline on the sidebar. This timeline serves as the "Recent News" feed, while the main column on the home page has become the "Top News" feed.

If Facebook's new layout is a bit confusing, check out this shorthand graph I found yesterday.

The point is that Facebook essentially took their existing friends feature, added the fast-paced, short feed style of Twitter on to its sidebar, and threw in a Google Plus-like top stories feed. By doing so, Facebook has certainly broadened its scope in terms of social media features, but at the same time weakening the depth and strength of those features.

However, there are still plenty more Facebook changes coming as we speak since Mark Zuckerberg is holding his annual f8 conference. I'll cover some of the highlights in tomorrow's Facebook Friday post.

Extra, Extra, Wall Street Journal on Facebook

Move over paper-boy, there's a new way to get your morning news. The Wall Street Journal has unveiled WSJ Social Beta, a novel way to consume news combining social media and their "WSJ Everywhere" strategy, which aims to make its content more ubiquitous.

The newspaper has launched WSJ Social, a Facebook app that republishes Journal content on Facebook. Thanks to sponsor Dell, all the content on the app will be free for the first month. After that, however, the app will contain the same mix of free and paid content as the WSJ's website.

The basic idea of WSJ Social is to create a news hub where you can read articles recommended by others, as well as share them easily with friends. Creating all of this content within the walls of Facebook also seems to fall in line with the social network's rumored strategy of including more original content such as music and video within the site.

The social aspect of WSJ Social is the crux of the app. For example, the stories you see depends on the likes of other readers who you choose to subscribe to. Other people can also add you as an editor, meaning they will see your Facebook likes of Journal stories. Your role then, becomes that of both editor and reader. Liking stories not only engages you with the article, but shares that content with your followers.

WSJ Social is an original way to really capitalize on the social aspect of news. Choosing the most popular social network site in the world as their platform was a good choice. Now we will see if people stick around to pay for the service, and if other news sources will start launching their own versions.

Here is snapshot of the front page:

What's On Your Phone? A Smart Phone Testimonial

By Dave Sniadak

With more than 10-billion apps downloaded since, well, the start of the business of downloading apps, it's time we all take a look at our phones and purge those apps that haven't been touched in a while.

The Nielsen Research Company recently posted findings from their first mobile media rankings for Android usage. Their findings are based solely on what Nielsen is calling apps that have 'active reach' - or the percentage of Android users who've used the apps in the past 30 days - from U.S.-based smart phone users ages 18 and up. The findings are interesting, if not telling about how men and women use their smart phones differently.

Nielsen's list of the overall Top 20 apps shouldn't surprise anyone - Market, Google Maps, Gmail, Facebook and Google Search are the first five - and the report supplements the list by breaking it out by gender. Apps like QuickOfficePro, Talk - Text to Voice and Adobe Reader imply that men might use their smart phones for work. Apps like Facebook, Words With Friends and Angry Birds tend to populate women's phones more than men, leading observers to believe female smart phone usage could be more on the playful side.

The biggest takeaway is that while millions of mobile users around the country may use their phones for a multitude of unique reasons, they're all dialed into smart phones for much more than just talking.

5 Important Stats about Brand Interaction on Facebook

Companies trying to establish their brands on Facebook is nothing new. However, now that brand proliferation is so strong online, it's good to step back and look at how the consumers are actually interacting with those brands.

A recent report from Constant Contact analyzed the online consumer behavior of nearly 1,500 Facebook users to see how they interact with brands. Rather than boring you with the entire report, here are the 5 key points I took away from the study:

• 78% like fewer than 10 brands: This is interesting, because that means a brand has to offer something of substance to be one of those few brands consumers are willing to follow.
• 58% like brands that they already use: This was the number one reason for why a consumer likes a brand. This is key because it contradicts the strategy of using Facebook to gain new customers. However, Facebook obviously plays into customer relations after the purchase.
• 56% more likely to recommend a brand: Echoing the previous point of post-purchase customer relations, more than half of those surveyed said they are much more likely to refer a brand to a friend after becoming a fan on Facebook.
• 13% post updates about brands they like: One of the biggest takeaways I got from this report is that very few consumers actively engage with brands on Facebook. This needs to be taken into account when brands are deciding what direction their Facebook page should go.
• 77% interact by reading posts: By a substantial margin, reading posts was the primary way consumers interact with brands. This is good news for brands that can't offer quick and easy discounts, because they can at least try to generate engaging content to fuel fan interaction.

While this survey focused on consumer brands, it's good to know that the quality of the content dictates how engaged fans will be. And although it's just one survey, there are still some very interesting lessons to take away as brands try to cut through the noise inherent to social media.

Google Chairman Draws Line in the Pseudonym Sand

Opinions are split on the idea of using real names online, with many questioning the security risks that come with it.

Accordingly, most social networks simply require usernames that aren't actual names themselves. Even sites that urge the use of real names, like Facebook, still have ways to get around the real-name issue.

However, Google recently created a stir by suspending Google+ accounts that didn't use their real names.

Naturally, those whose personal brands were built on fake names (pseudonyms, blog names, etc.) were up in arms over the exclusion. However, I personally felt this issue would go through the same phases that practically all of these social media controversies do:

1. Polarizing decision by company
2. Angry mob of users
3. Retraction and resolution by company

Basically, when users start making a lot of noise, the social networks eventually makes concessions.

Not so in this case. In fact, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was recently interviewed, more or less saying the if you don't like their policy, then don't use Google+. It's definitely not the typical fence-straddling corporate-speak we tend to get in response to contentious decisions, but it is a firm line the Google is drawing in regards to the use of real names online.

Either way, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out as Google+ continues to push for social networking legitimacy.

The Answers Social Media Infographics Provide (And The Questions They Raise)

Social media has obviously revolutionized the way brands connect with consumers. And with the hundreds of thousands of ways that marketers have planted themselves in our digital lives, sometimes it's nice to step back and admire the magnitude of social media marketing.

This infographic on Mashable examines some of the larger examples of effective campaigns based on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and location-based services like Foursquare. There are plenty of numbers on the infographic, but here's a quick sampling:

• 12 million YouTube views for the "Will It Blend?" iPad video over 4 months
• 86.5 million impressions for Coca-Cola's promoted trending topic in June 2010
• 11% consumers say they would buy something offered only to Facebook fans.
• 184,000 people participated in a 3-month Buffalo Wild Wings SCVNGR campaign

Of course, stats like this stir mixed emotions from people like me who work on the marketing/PR side of social media. On one hand, these numbers prove the impact social media marketing can have, as well as the sheer potential that exists online.

However, looking only at social media marketing's biggest successes (or failures for that matter) tend to skew the perception of brands looking to get into social media.

A company who only sees these grandiose examples of pages with thousands of fans or videos may come to expect that incredibly high level of success as normal. And when a campaign falls short of those lofty expectations, they may not see the value in social media even if the campaign was objectively successful.

The problem, however, can be solved by clearly defining the client's expectations before the campaign is agreed to. This should also include discussing the client's idea of success and, if need be, an honest assessment of what the client should expect from their social media efforts.

Wordless Wednesday: What are the best video chat services and who's using them?