Each day Facebook Users

• Become a fan of 2 pages
• Is invited to 2 events
• Is a member of 12 groups

With those numbers you now need to ask yourself as a business owner:

• Does your business have a fan page? Is it regularly updated?
• Are there any Facebook groups that exist currently that could help those people solve their problem or a great gift? Have you joined the group and shared it with them?
• Any work event, product launch, or new offering should be handled in Facebook (and LinkedIn where appropriate). Do you include your Facebook users in your invite list?

Each Week 3.5 billion pieces of content is uploaded and shared through Facebook

Once upon a time, the only place you can regularly find new and current information on the Internet was search engines. You would also have the regular websites that you visited everyday to see if there was something new.

Now both those means of discovery can be merged into the Facebook platform. This is because the information shared is referred by trusted partners (friends, family, workmates) and generally those people have similar interests to you.

The ease of sharing through Facebook’s interface has also contributed to its continual growth. Make it easy to do, and people do it.

So the questions you need to ask a business are:

• Do you feel the content on your website is Facebook-share-worthy?
• Are you even writing regular information on your website for people to regularly visit and be updated?
• Are you alerting your clients of special offers and action plans in little Facebook releases?

At the end of the day, the numbers here are not really a revelation because those that realise the power of the platform are already utilising it.

This graphic needs to be shared with the decision makers in your organisation that are the doubters and think it is nothing more than a time waste.

Give it to them now!

Adidas has now included features when buying Adidas Original sneakers that allow people to interact over the Internet. Specifically:

On Feb. 10, Adidas Originals sneakers will include a code that lets consumers partake in an augmented reality program… By holding the code in front of a Webcam, consumers will be able to access the virtual neighborhood and interactive games (created by Xform)

What does this mean for Social & Online Marketing?

It means more than just conversing with our clients. Social Media has done a fantastic job so far of being able to reach our customers and getting them to engage with us, leave feedback, and in some cases purchase as well. But what it cannot enable consumers to do is interact with the brand and use the product at the same time.

Adidas are getting some top tier advice here as now not only are they getting people to buy and use their product, but they are getting them to use it online and log and track their movements. They can learn how shoe buyers behave online - which is information they could not have access to any other way previously, besides doing costly research.

So I guess the question is - how far away are you from tying your products to an online world and community?

You should just be calling them videos first

You as a marketing team or content creators do not decide whether or not a video will go viral or not. It’s be democratic election and natural exponential growth. Your main job is to launch and feed your creative to the major channels, and let the people make the choice. Sure there are elements or a premise that can increase the chances of pick up (think pain, humor, controversy and cats) but there is no correlation to adding cats and instant viral success.

What was the point of the video?

All online campaigns need to have a point, and videos are no exception. Depending on the goal of the creative, the call to action that you put at the end needs to motivate. So if your a film agency, you might create a video about how stop motion ninja’s unboxed a NexusOne phone. The point being the client requested the video and the branding at the end identifies the person that made the film, perfect promotion of the product and the filmmaker.

In this case, I am assuming Google wanted a video that would appeal to its target market and establish the “coolness” of the phone.

But the one thing that was missing after those cool ninjas was what to do next? Do I buy the phone? Should I go get some ninja figurines? Should I talk about the video with my friends? I wasn’t too sure.

Naturally it wants me to go find out more of the website, but didn’t really guide me in the right direction, even at the end after all the credits.

The Point: Make sure you motivate your viewers to take action.

How to track buzz into conversions/sales?

You really need to make sure you have consulted with the web traffic/data analysis team to make sure all links mentioned, or any video embedding has some of tracking enabled. If you are using YouTube - YouTube Insights will be a very handy friend.

But before you launch the video to, your website should be able to handle the bursts in traffic. You will be expecting spikes in traffic on and off over a couple of weeks as it gets shared around. But then those thousands (possibly millions) of viewers will then probably want to check out your website. Can your server 100000 extra visits everyday for 2 weeks? Can your website load within a reasonable amount of time so people are not turned off as to leave?

And the most important of all is have you created a landing page for your campaign? Do you want to spend all the money in the world with a product launch video, that have generated thousands of words, to the bog standard homepage with the same generic content that get’s feed to searchers, repeat visitors and search bots? No, the best move is to make a dedicated landing page that perfectly ties into the idea and product promoted in the video and the money making button for them to click.

The Point: Make sure you website has been modified to handle massive spikes in traffic and to have an appropriate landing page to direct people to do after the video.

What happens if I don’t?

If you don’t follow the steps above, here are a few possible outcomes:

• Your website server will crumble over the hits and present people with errors.
• Your video will be lost in the crowd of next week’s viral offering.
• You will not be able to calculate the effectiveness of the video.
• It will have been an extremely costly exercise with no visible ROI
• Potential damage to your brand reputation as articles that cover failed viral campaigns normally go more viral than the actual campaign.

So keep these things in mind before you head into the world of viral video!

But the problem that has recently occurred is the fact that with all these networks, they all want you to use your login creditials to sign into other networks, for example:

• Google Friend Connect
• Facebook Connect
• OpenID
• whatever it maybe next week….

So all these social webapps want to know where you are (hello 4square), who you are friends with (hello facebook) and where you post comments and leave feedback (hello google friend connect). Now the networks are obiviously not doing this for your benefit, or to make it easy for you to login. The reason? Because if there was this magical cloud login certificate authority (lets call it CloudAuth), there would be no reason for separate sign ups for each network. It could actually pull the standard required data from CloudAuth and store only that username and password - and then the relevant activity you have placed on that network.

Currently you are just duping up your information across the Internet - especially the most important details, your contact information. Think about what you are giving them. You are providing a social map of what you do with your day and where you are and who you are with. I didn’t even want my parents to know that when I was a teenager and yet I am more than happy to tell Facebook and 4square.

So What can you do?

The short answer is not much. Those networks provide great services and information, and allow you to connect with your friends and family in ways you never thought. Unfortunately, you have to go through the labourious process of inputting your data and receive stupid updates to a whole bunch of networks you don’t actually like.

What I would love to see is one day, CloudAuth becomes a standard, where there is no more actual signups because you have already signed up once, and there is only one of you. But not only tie it into your social networks, but your work and personal email, your online shopping, your favourites.

One day we can hope and dream…

I feel the fact that businesses in general still feel that social media appears to look like “play time” for it’s staff, or the agency that it is hiring. Coupled with the fact that there are many unscrupulous characters masquerading as experts and then basically auto registering branded channels and profile pages before jumping ship to a beach on the coast of some island.

It is actually very similar to the search marketing industry, with many abusing the system and the process in order for short term gains. Adding crazy expectations and immediate results that were never achieved, left a bitter taste in client’s mouths. But looking back now on around 10 years of search engine marketing and optimisation, we can see the fact that businesses would be crazy not to be taking search seriously. The industry involved, the snakes disappeared, and properly structured and specific campaigns are being setup and run effectively and generating a return.

Social media will get there - I am sure of it. We will look back on this time and comment how crazy it was that no business had someone sitting on their Twitter account and monitoring conversations and generating feedback. It would be crazy not to syndicate their content across all the available channels.

So I feel for the Population team, and I wish them all the best in their new endeavours. And soon, I am sure, the rise of the dedicated social media agency in Australia will occur, and the industry as a whole will benefit.

What is a vanity website?

A vanity website is basically a place online that aggregates all your information and your social bios into one place online. Designers and other web savy people social media were doing this a long time ago - buying their own name domain and pointing links to their work or just placing their CV and portfolio on it.

It was out of the mainstream however due to the skill of having to build it from scratch and making it unique from everyone else (you can be you with a default set of templates). The other reason why they were never extremely popular is the fact that the average joe or executive did not have a presence online. But with this “fad” of social media not disappearing and the fact that most of the major networks rank extremely highly for peoples own names, it has almost forced us to take our online reputation seriously.

So how do I set a vanity site up?

There are a few services out there currently that can not only give you the infrastructure that you need, but integrate with all over the major social networks. These are:

• Card.ly - This is probably the one with the best traction at the moment allowing a bio page, links to all your networks, complete contact information storage and streaming from your participating networks. There is a wide variety of custom themes but unfortunately no support for completely custom. Signing up for a paid membership however does give a greater ability for customisation and even gives you a fully-followed link out of it.
• Flavors.me - doing almost the same as cardly but with what I think are better templates and also the fact that you can submit some definite personal touches such as a custom background images (a la Twitter) and integration with a smaller number of networks (Last.fm, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Tumblr). However the overall look is very arthouse, trendy, designer friendly, which I am sure will appeal to the more fashion conscious. The only downside is that it doesn’t appear to be accepting many members at the moment and also appears to be a paid only service.
• DIY - By going DIY you buy your own domain address and can use your skills (no matter how limited, to build your own vanity website. Take 5 minutes just to install a Wordpress blog and not only can you combine all your services into a page, but you can also have a fully functioning blog which you can actively use for a week or two and neglect - as per the vast majority of the online population. As long as your homepage is static like and accepting feeds from your social networks then you can hide the blog in the back until you are a bit more disciplined.

Do I really need one though?

Well this really depends on how important it is for people to find you online? By having an exact domain match for your own name which then links out to your chosen networks (you can control the flow) then you can maybe hide some of the things you get up to (I’m thinking of your Facebook) and only give people the full perception that you want them to have. None of the other networks will outrank an exact domain match for you. It’s almost a certainty.

So for those that are on every network known to man, and want to have that one stop shop for them, vanity website is definitely for you.

I actually was an active Bebo user for quite a few months a couple of years ago, when it was first launched in Australia. It was my network of choice for a few reasons:

• It was clean and easy to use - compared to MySpace at the time which frustrated me to no end due to the visual abominations that were MySpace page customisations. Bebo made it easy for everyone with a fixed template suggestion.
• All my friends were on it - Since many of my friends believed in the same benefits listed above, they flocked in droves and hence we were commenting and swapping photos all over the place.
• Good privacy settings - The customisable settings that were featured was a much better fit for my security needs, then MySpaces’s all-or-nothing approach.

So with all these good features, why did everything go so wrong? Well Facebook gained traction, twitter started to move on board, and there was also new networks springing up all over the place with very similar feature sets - trying to jump in and cash in on the fad.

And that’s where I think Bebo’s strategy feel down - they started to play Mr Me Too.

• Trying to do music - I remember logging in one day and noticing that everyone was becoming friends of bands and so forth, clamouring to get their attention.
• Trying to be YouTube - You then started to embed and share videos that you uploaded, something YouTube really has had on lock for a while.
• Poor Monetisation - the next thing the network is filled with banner ads, flashing gifs and other irrelevant information - when all I was trying to do was check out my friends photos from the weekend.
• No API - When Facebook released their API, that is really when things started going crazy and the developers spurred on users by offering them something to do when their friends were not online.

So by being a jack of all trades and master of none, I believe they really should have focused on doing one thing, and doing it well. If only Twitter was gaining traction, they would have learnt from their example and let the user’s define the functionality.

So thanks for the memories Bebo.

Set Aside Time in Your Day

If you do not set aside the appropriate time in the day, and just leave the networks running in the background you will definitely not be productive. Spend a week making notes when the majority of your network is online, or even see if you can figure out the patterns of some of the people you really want to get in touch with. Then build your social media timetable around that. I try to spend no more than 1 hour per day across all the networks during office hours.

Reread Every Update Before Posting

None of the major social networks allow you to cancel an updated submission once you press send. Whilst you can delete it, you never know that someone could have got a RT in or taken a screenshot in that spilt second. So for every second you spend typing that update, spend the same amount of time to proof read it. You will be surprised how many mistakes you can make in 140 characters.

Read Your Companies Policies

If you are being social on the corporate dime, make sure you play by the rules. You have heard all of the horror stories of people getting fired or reprimanded from their social updates, and you might think your immune. Trust me, you aren’t. They will find it, scold you, then show you the door. Think of it like being caught out on a date with your mate’s girlfriend behind his back.

Separate Business & Pleasure

Everyone likes to have fun on the weekend, and some people like to have a little bit too much fun. But if you fun ends up on the company feed, I doubt there will be much fun left when Monday arrives. I setup fake names and cartoon photos with accounts that only my close friends and family have access to. That way you will never really know what I get up to on the weekends, or when I am not posting on the blog.

Nothing I am saying here is ground breaking, but if you are a new player in the social media game, and you want your staff to know what is expected, show them this post. Or if you are an employer, what do you have setup to make sure your staff don’t abuse social media?

So what did he tell us to do?

Good question. In essence he didn’t really reveal anything ground breaking in terms of managing a social media account/campaign. He was preaching points and ideas that everyone in social media is/should already be doing:

• Staying ahead of the story with continual monitoring of conversations.
• He is a self tweeter – no assistance or AutoDMs.
• He adds value to his network and his community.
• He is completely transparent online.
• He believes and respects the power of social media and how it has evolved his brand.

So where was the benefit?

I firmly believe that the real benefit of SMCSYD last night was not listening to how MC Hammer uses Twitter in a university lecture hall. In effect he spent the night preaching to the converted, talking to social media experts about how to use social media. What he did have though were some interesting thoughts and insights about its future, which got some applause from the audience.

The benefit of last night came from the awareness Hammer brought to Australian business people about social media. Here is a man that was incredibly famous, incredibly popular and incredibly talented (the dance was genius - you can’t deny it), who then preceded to disappear and bankrupt himself a few years later. From that low point in his life he came back and re-built his brand from the ground up (who can say they were a minister -> rapper -> broke -> minister -> social media expert) and regain his respect and reputation.

He is the perfect case study for proving the value of social media and what it can do for both a person and a brand.

I am sure all the social media agencies around Sydney (whether big or small) in the next few months will notice that there will be an increase in both interest (and hopefully campaign budgets/sign offs) that will help make Australia the number one place for Social Media champions.

And that is probably the greatest benefit of all.

SlideShare.net Goes Business

SlideShare.net, everyone’s favourite slide sharing service (especially social media gurus) now offers you some nice data sorting and capturing functionality. Now you can track how many leads you get based on how many people checked out your preso. That is a pretty nifty feature, assigning a more accurate ROI on your hard presentations.

Tommy Lee Builds his Album Web 2.0 Style

This is a fantastic story mainly due to the fact that I respect Tommy Lee for going out and doing something crazy, let letting any Joe Blow contribute music to his new album. Tommy Lee puts up the stems, you can lay your licks over the top, he picks the best, and plans to give you a cut of the album. Too cool for school. Who said the music industry is out of ideas? Or maybe it was his social media consultant that helped him out. I’m wagering on the latter.

The Search Engines Want Real Time Data

What had started as talks about intergrating real time data into regular old fashioned search engines has now become a reality. Bing hit first saying its got Twitter updates built in. Google says ‘me too’. Bing goes well guess what we have Facebook status updates, so nerrr nerrr ne nerrr nerrr. Google fires back with, well we just made social search live, and you can mix into your SERPs your buddy’s SERPs and that we think is pretty cool.

And Yahoo? Oh yeah, they got some realtime search engine integration mixing everything all together into a big search mashup.

Phew, take a breath and go back to just clicking the first result of the SERP.

Wall Street Journal Says Watch out for Impersonators

It’s an increasing problem that people are spamming, scamming and impersonating businesses and people on social networks. They give the same old tried and tested advice to make sure you go run and claim up as many of the usernames as you can to stop this kind of action. You have been warned.

Thats all folks!

PS. This should be a public service announcement: when to use an apostrophe