People frequently tell me they plan on taking on an intern to manage their social media. An inner part of me cringes every time I hear this because I know I have failed to explain the importance and power of social media to them in a way they can understand.

Yes, I am a biased opinion. I am convinced though that social media is one of the most effective ways of reaching a large audience. Additionally, social media represents a new twist in Marketing… everything said on social media is permanently archived forever in an easy to search manner. Talk about what a PR nightmare it could turn into! Every piece of content said is permanently attached to your brand image.

When I hear people say they are excited that they found an unpaid intern or low-paid intern to manage their social media and help them get into the 21^st century, I know it is already too late to educate them on the dangers this provides their business. The primary question I wish I had the opportunity to ask them point-blank one month prior:

When you think about your company brand that you’ve worked so hard to establish, how do you want to continue it? In a concentrated professional manner, or in a haphazard way that might occur with a low paid (or free) intern who might leave you in a few weeks. Most companies say they want consistency of message and of delivery.  They want to be confident that the words that go out about their company are well-thought out.  Because social media is quite new to a lot of companies, many don’t know that there is no “undo button” in social media?

How much do YOU want to risk?  With SMCPros you can be confident every move is planned and focused on making you look good to your customers and prospects.  Our methods are tried and proven successful. We are way past guessing what works.  So I ask again: How much do you want to risk?

Having said this, please, be careful.

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There have been many people across the globe complaining about Facebook’s recent privacy setting changes. As a matter of fact, Facebook has been LISTENING to you! Due to peoples rising concern they have decided to reconsider those settings.

The announcement is expected to take place shortly after 1:00pm ET, on Wednesday.

“I can confirm that our new, simpler user controls will begin rolling out tomorrow. I can’t say more yet,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told CNN in an e-mail Tuesday.

The website also implemented, among other changes, a new tool that spreads user preferences and data across the Web. This tool allows Facebook users to share articles and “Like” pages. In return this had an impact on the privacy settings and some members voiced their concerns to changes that switched their settings to default making their profiles open to the public.

“I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve,” Zuckerberg said in the e-mail, which Scoble printed after receiving permission from the Facebook CEO to do so.

What kind of changes are you expecting to be rolled out?

CNN Tech was used as a source for the above information.

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Over the last two weeks, both Twitter and Facebook held their developer conferences, Chirp and f8. Both of these events had announcements that turned the social world on its head.

Chirp

Chirp, Twitter’s developer conference, brought several things to light. It first shed more light on the announcement that came the day before, about Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets”, their advertising mechanisim. This service places tweets at the top of search results, which function like tweet despite being sponsored by a company. At first, this service is only open to a few select companies, with more being added in phase 2. Additionally, the ads may make the move to a user’s timeline sometime in late 2010.

Chirp also came after many Twitter 3rd-party developers were in outrage with their acquisitions of Atebits, makers of Tweetie, an iPhone Twitter client. They viewed this as Twitter trying to push them out of business. Twitter’s platform manager, Ryan Sarver, posted on the Google Group for the API that they were not making “official” applications, but rather trying to make it easier for a new user to find what they are looking for. Many users looked in the iPhone app store, but could not find a client that looked “official” and gave up. The purchase of Atebits, as well as the partnering to create a BlackBerry client, was to ease this issue. They are not blocking developers, and actually use the exact same API’s; keeping developers on a level playing field with the company itself.

Twitter also rolled out a few new technical features-@anywhere and the new Stream API, as well as a new developer website. @anywhere allows people to make Twitter interactions on any website, such as following someone, tweeting, and getting information about a user. For an example of this, look at my tech analyzing website, where I implemented it. The stream API is to get more low-latency updates for applications, allowing for better access for Twitter. The new developer website simply provides a homepage for developers, bringing together several disparate sites under one umbrella.

f8

Facebook announced several changes that rocked the social world  (whether someone wants to admit it or not). The biggest announcement was about a “like” button for the entire web. Using their tool, any website can have a “like” button, and use it to see engagement by users/viewers. In some cases, such as IMDB, this allows users’ profiles to have their interests updated when they like a movie. Several people, including myself, commented that Facebook is trying to own the entire web with this move.

Facebook also announced several new API’s, all of which make it easier to interact with Facebook, and allow applications to know more about a user, their interests, their connections, and their social graph. This has led to several people panicking over privacy concerns since 3rd-party apps have even more access to information than before. (If you are concerned about this, the settings you need to change are in Facebook’s Security Center).

Facebook also launched these API’s with several high-profile partners, such as Pandora and CNN.

What does this all mean?

The question that I spent most of Wednesday night losing sleep over is “What does this all mean?” These changes certianly changed the social media world, but in what way?

These moves show a concerted effort by Facebook and Twitter to extend their influence, and data-collection abilities, beyond their own domains. Now, you can interact with Facebook from everywhere, not just a site you are connected too or a main domain. For businesses, this means that you now can have even more insight into your customers, their habits, and what they care about.

Advertising is now more accurate, since people are able to update their interests and likes with much less friction. This data is what Facebook uses to display ad results, making it much targeted, meaning your dollars are being used much more wisely.

If you are interested in implementing any of these new technologies for your business, please contact us!

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Numerous marketing approaches are being used nowadays, how do you know which one is the most appropriate for your organization?

We usually start by breaking down each approach before analyzing and making a decision as to which route to proceed with.

Ask yourself not only what your target market is, but also WHERE they are at. Are they on social media platforms? Are they listening to the radio, watching tv or perhaps just reading the newspaper? Any campaign you decide to run with needs to be carefully thought through. Brainstorm your objectives and set your direction.

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I watched a TED video this morning. Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Wine Library TV, reminded me once again that everything we do today is digitally recorded. Our children and grand-children are going to have access to so much about our lives. When I think about what I know about my great grand-parents, I know their names and I know the few stories I have time to hear from my grandparents. But my children are going to have access to what I said on twitter even today, March 15th, 2010. They will be able to see that I missed the last 3 episodes of 24 because hulu broadcasts that.

Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, spoke at an EO event this past week at the James J Hill library on the topic of Social Media. He also stressed the importance and power of the web. As technology evolution continues to accelerate, more and more of what we do is going to be digitally recorded and archived. In the near future, life will be video-recorded and broadcasted everywhere we go (as it already can be). What does this mean in the privacy debates, speed of life issues, the ADD surge in young people? I don’t know. But technology is quickly and gracefully macro-evolving the way life works.

I am very interested to know your thoughts on whether these things concern you, excite you, and what you plan on doing with this.

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Facebook’s recent changes have finally rolled out to me just today. Most of us almost always dislike new changes first time round. Having explored the new re-design however, I feel that it is much more user-friendly and has a cleaner feel to it. How do you feel about these new changes?

I like what they have done with the top menu and think it’s a great idea to have those icons up there for easier navigation. Even more, the concept of having the icon light up when a new notification/ message is received is a splendid way to grasp one’s attention.

Explore it and give it time, we only need to adjust to the modifications before being able to accept them!

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People frequently ask us here at SMCpros about the demographic information of Social Media. In order to measure demographics, marketers typically combine several variables.

How does one talk about the demographics of the global population? It’s almost useless information when trying to talk about its utility as a marketing tool.

Here’s my take on the importance of Social Media demographics to business:
- There are approximately 6.8 billion people on earth (1)
- There are approximately 1.7 billion people on earth with access to the internet (2)
- There are approximately 350 million registered members on Facebook (3)
- There are approximately 175 million registered members on Facebook who are on Facebook every single day (4)

In short, that means that 10% of all internet users in the world login to Facebook every single day. And, if you only are interested in marketing in the United States, the number is far higher than that.

In sum, the answer to the question typically is, “Yes, your target market is on social media, they use it, and they use it frequently!”

*Statistics based on Wikipedia

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Many people have been  predicting what social media marketing will be like for 2010, we here at SMCpros have put together some thoughts of our own on what to expect for the New Year. Here are what the employees had to say about what they saw coming for the online world next year:

Mitchell Hislop:

• Businesses will learn that they need to leverage the internet with more than just a static website.
• Humans will experience a shift in how they naturally communicate.
• Companies will become more transparent.
• We will see several networks close their doors, get sold, or merge with other networks.
• We will see legislation passed regarding social media.
• There will be a greater connection between social media and IRL events.
• Twitter will be fully mainstream, not just a joke.
• Either LinkedIn will cement itself as a top network, or a new startup will round out the “Big 3″.
• There will be major discoveries in the way humans interact with data and the internet.
• We will discover even more than we already know about social media. I am of the opinion that there is no way we are using its full potential, and am constantly searching for what these full potential are.

Joel Feder:

• The term “Social Media” might transform into something else.
• SEO will become less important as search engines become more sophisticated.
• Google Analytics will be much more advanced.
• Twitter will evolve and add more features.
• Twitter will become highly profitable.
• Foursquare will either evolve or die out.
• Gowalla will burn out.
• Facebook will continue to make more changes and users will find fault.
• Traditional advertising will fall even lower on people’s priority lists.
• Twitter applications (Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, etc) will become more advanced.
• We will see more cross pollination between platforms/sites.
• Apple will release a new iPhone and also a new tablet. They both will sell like hotcakes.

Adam Maikkula:

• Businesses will begin to adopt social media as a complement to their existing business initiatives.
• Social media will begin to be seen as a necessity rather than a “what kind of ROI do I get?” conversation.
• The ROI discussion will fade as businesses realize that social media was built to be social…Why do you think individuals started using these sites in the first place; let alone the early adopters who happened to be (guess what) college students who like to socialize.
• Platforms evolved because of the millions of people who wanted to be social outside of their immediate environment – just like AOL Instant Messenger was big when I was in high school.

It wasn’t until businesses saw the potential energy lying dormant within all of these virtual places that they started trying to make social media adapt to business, but it should be business that adapts to social media.  No intelligent business would ever walk into a movie theater or a play and start shouting with a bullhorn all their great specials, promos, or how awesome they are.  That would not be appropriate…They would, however, figure out how to adapt to the environment (platform) by leveraging the resources available to them (think running a traditional ad on the screen before the movie, or product placement within the actual movie).

My primary point here is that it all comes down to the social aspects of social media.  Those who lack social skills will have a hard time fully leveraging these products.

My projection for 2010 is that business will learn to adapt to social media in order to avoid polarizing themselves from the users who are at the heart of the sites.

Tim Barsness:

• LinkedIn will become useful.
• Twitter will earn money.
• Interoperability between big players (FB/TW/LI) will increase.
• Tweetdeck will become web based.

Sarah Shehata:

• Facebook will continue to upgrade their platform and add more features.
• LinkedIn will be used on an even more professional level by businesses. The direction it is heading in is not necessarily advertising their services/products, but rather more along the lines of building brand awareness and showing their level of expertise within their industry.
• Twitter will be used as a live tool for instant questions, answers and quick research.
• A new platform will compete against the current ‘big 3′ social media platforms.

Tyler Olson:

• Twitter will start charging for upgraded accounts.
• Geo-location social media tools will begin going mainstream towards the end of the year.
• ROI track ability applications and integration will increase significantly.
• SMCpros starts rocking to a whole new level!

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