I’m a firm believer that any brand engaging in social media must be all-in and show customers that it’s an important part of their communications mix by promoting their account anywhere they promote other digital properties. Simply placing a social networking site’s logo on one’s advertisements and expecting their customers to do the work in proactively searching for their page is lazy and stupid, especially in this world of spoof accounts and unofficial fan pages.

We’re quickly approaching a time when not having a presence on any social sites will make a brand seem as out of touch with their audience as not having a website looks today. Customers are so used to seeing a Facebook logo on everything from beer bottles to yogurt cups that it lacks any sort of impact anymore. If a brand is going to use it in their ads, at least make it useful to us.

If you’re not familiar with Path, it bills itself as “the smart journal that helps you share your life with the ones you love.” Basically, it’s a gorgeous app that looks like it could’ve been Facebook if Facebook debuted on mobile. Flipboard is a customized news reader that has been iPad-only for quite some time and finally made its way to iPhone & iPod Touch.

Path

Path is not a new app, but it feels like it after the recent 2.0 release. Path has always been a very beautiful app, but that’s all it had going for it. You could only share with a small number of people and the number of friends I had using it I could could on one hand. Path 2.0 takes sharing to a whole new level and ups the game in user interface design by doing so.

The first thing you see when you launch Path is your home feed. It comes pre-installed with a beautiful stock photo, but it can easily be  customized to anything you like.

Path also has a fantastic pop-out menu for sharing new content: photos, videos, music you are listening to, location, text, people & sleep/wake.

While some may argue that Path isn’t really doing anything new and that there are many social networks that allow for sharing all this information (a scrappy little startup called Facebook comes to mind), what keeps me coming back to Path is it’s user interface. It’s a joy to use as both a content sharer and consumer and is really pioneering mobile social sharing forward in terms of user experience. It will be interesting to see how Path’s momentum holds up once Facebooks revised app is released with support for “timelines.” It’s supposed to be incredible.

Flipboard

I always wondered how Flipboard was going to bring its magazine-style format to the iPhone screen and still have it feel like the Flipboard I knew and loved. To my surprise, they pulled it off wonderfully.

The app revolves mainly around upward-swiping gestures to navigate through individual stories. It also has a wonderful “Cover Stories” feature that attempts to highlight the content most important to you. Similar to Zite, this is supposed to get smarter the more you use it.

As you drill down into each tile, you get news, photos and other content that can easily be shared or bookmarked for later reading. This is all formatted in the same magazine-style format found on the iPad but perfectly tailored for the iPhone’s 3.5″ screen.

As you can clearly see, Path and Flipboard are really upping the game when it comes to UI design. I’m really anxious to see how other apps follow suit. The recent updates to the iPhone Twitter app area also a step forward in design aesthetic, it’s just unfortunate that it comes at the expense of user experience.

What other apps have you seen that have exceptional design? Let me know in the comments.

The social networking market is too saturated and is handicapping innovation. Aside from the user interface of Zite, Flipboard and Currents, where is the innovation here? Granted, Flipboard was the first to really succeed in bringing curated news in a table-friendly format, and Zite’s claim to fame was that it got smarter the more you used it, but with so many other competitors in the market now – AOL Editions, Yahoo! Livestand and Flud to name a few, it’s hard to differentiate between them all.  This is even more painfully obvious when each app is pulling in roughly the same personalized content.

I get it – make something successful and others rip it off. This isn’t anything new, however the difference here is that for the most part, when it came to mobile & social apps, companies were always one-upping each other and we the user won in the end with increased innovation.

Again, this is a problem across the board. Developers need to get back to basics and remember the mantra that to be successful, one has to do one thing and do it very well. I can’t think of a better example of this right now than Instagram. The photo sharing space was as saturated as it got, at least when it came to the web. Flickr and Picasa were the big players with a bunch of other clones. It wasn’t until the success of 500px that the web photo sharing market seen any real new innovation and disruption, but even so, 500px still has a far way to go before it can topple the big boys. Fortunately for Instagram, there was no clear leader in mobile photo sharing realm. Flickr and Picasa both dropped the ball on dominating the small screen and the success of apps like Hipstamatic and Camerabag showed that people love filters, although none of them were truly social. Realizing this opportunity allowed Instagram to become one of the hottest startups in years and grow to 5 million users in it’s first eight months. Not bad for an app that’s not even out on Android yet!

Instead of trying to be the next “(insert name of your competition) killer,” stop recreating the wheel and focus disrupting the industry. Instagram caught Flickr and Picasa with their pants down and neither of them have anything close to compete. This is how you gain an advantage and become the next “big boy.”

The article also presents some fascinating statistics. Of Twitter’s active daily users,

• 72% publish blog posts at least once a month
• 70% comment on others’ blog posts
• 61% write at least one product review a month
• 61% comment on news sites
• 56% write articles for third-party sites
• 53% post videos online
• 50% make contributions to wiki sites
• 48% share deals found through coupon forums

Twitter users are social media power users; these are the people that are going to be much more likely to help or hurt your brand; it’s wise not to ignore them. Sure, Facebook is great and 750 million active users is a sexy number, but it certainly shouldn’t dissuade you from doing a deeper investigation into Twitter as a medium of communications if you’ve avoided it in the past – you might just be surprised what you find there.

Photo by Josh Semans

Warby Parker
Warby Parker is a company that has been turning the eyeglass industry upside-down. Okay, maybe that’s a bit overstated, but they are certainly poised to do so. In a nutshell, they provide prescription eyeglasses that are highly fashionable for only $95. They also will ship up to five pairs of frames for you to try on at home before you purchase to make sure you like them. As the icing on the cake, they donate a pair of glasses and a portion of the proceeds to a wonderful charity called VisionSpring. I’ve already ordered two pairs from them personally, as well as referred four or five others that have all made at least one purchase and it’s mostly due in part to their fantastic customer service.

When I first went to order my home try-on’s, I was having a problem with the website. It wouldn’t accept my order and kept crashing the server. I made a comment on Twitter about how disappointed I was that I wasn’t able to order my try-ons and within 30 minutes I received a phone call and email from a member of their customer service team trying to assist me in solving the problem. After we both realized there was something awry with the site, the gentleman took my order over the phone and gave me free overnight shipping for the inconvenience. I was so impressed by the proactive engagement on Warby Parker’s behalf, not to mention the beautiful glasses, that they now have a customer for life in me.

Eye-Fi
I have been using an Eye-Fi memory card in my camera for a couple of years now. An Eye-Fi card can do many things, but the main reason I use it is to have my photos geotagged automatically. A couple of weeks ago I realized that my photos were no longer being geotagged in iPhoto and mistakenly thought I had to pay $30 for a yearly  subscription rewnewal of HotSpot access. After making the purchase and still not seeing any geotagging data, further investigation showed me that my model Eye-Fi card includes free lifetime geotagging. I emailed customer service and told them of my mistake and within 24 hours I had a refund in my account.

Where the customer service really impressed me was when trying to identify the cause of my geotagging problems. Evidently, recent iPhoto and Aperture updates have essentially broken the reading of the Eye-Fi geotagging data. After pointing out the issue to Eye-Fi on Twitter, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was causing the issue. While the problem currently remains, I have seen my issue escalated to their support forums by members of their team who really appear to be working hard to get to the bottom of this.

The Tie Bar
I will be the first to admit that I have a bit of an obsession with The Tie Bar. After discovering this amazing company a couple years back in GQ, I was hooked. They create gorgeous, highly-fashionable ties and accessories at unbelievable prices. Every time I get an email from them with the season’s new additions, I usually buy at at least two or three ties.

Last year, a tie that I ordered was marked as “delivered” by the Post Office tracking, but it never made its way to my front door. After reaching out to them on Twitter, I was handed off to a customer service representative that really went above and beyond to help track this tie down. A few days later, the postman evidently found it in his truck and delivered it to me, but the whole time The Tie Bar was in contact with me to try everything they could to track this down. What really impressed me is that they recognized me from my previous purchases and knew I was a loyal customer and not someone trying to rip them off. That little act of telling me how much they value my business really made me appreciate them much more than just another company, but a brand that I now have a real, human connection with.

What “kudos” do you want to give to a deserving company? Let me know in the comments.

One of the first things I learned in driver’s education class was that on the road, everyone is equal. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a Ferrari or a Chevy Nova, your essentially barreling down the highway in a giant instrument of destruction. This is no different with computers; no matter how one accesses the Internet, whether it be a fancy new MacBook Pro or a seven-year-old Compaq, we’re all the same. There are many companies out there trying to tell you otherwise by placing arbitrary influence scores on you, but at the end of the day, it all means nothing.

The power of social media is that it’s the great equalizer. If you have a connection to the web and something to share, you can literally change the world. Those that risked their lives in Egypt to share their revolution with the world were not allowed to do so only if their Klout score was higher than 40. If you can share it and people can search it, your words, images and videos are just as powerful as someone with 1,000 times the followers or “influence score.” Sure, just like the shiny Ferrari, those with the larger networks may have a faster ride to their destination, but don’t ever think that what you have to say isn’t as valuable as any “social media guru” or “Internet celebrity,” because in the end, getting hit head-on by a Chevy Nova at 70 MPH is going to hurt just as much as it would if it was the Ferrari.

While basking in the joy that most of America felt this week when LeBron James and company failed to bring home an NBA title, some in the media were referring to James as a egotist. I don’t think that’s fair, and not because I think they’re being too harsh on “King James,” but because I think egotism is thrown around with too much negative connotation.

As humans, we are all egotistic creatures. It’s engrained within our DNA – we all want to be heard, enjoyed, appreciated, praised and respected. Sure, some show the trait more than others, but egotism drives just about every aspect of our society. It’s the reason that we have whistle blowers, fame whores, rock stars, politicians and…social media!

Nowhere is egotism more on display than on the internet. Social networking, which has been around for decades, is now a household term and just about everyone reading this has some sort of presence there. Yes, it really exploded in popularity the past several years with the advent of Blogs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and a bevy of other networks, but this is not because of a cultural change in “over-sharing,” it’s because the tools that facilitate this sharing were no longer restricted to the “computer geeks.” Anyone with an internet connection can share information, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the younger genration.

I think we need to stop using egotistic behavior as something we look down on and start appreciating it for all that it provides us, most notably the vast amount of information that makes up the world wide web. If it was in our nature to be private, reserved creatures, society would not be progressing forward as quickly as it does in its current form.

As far as LeBron is concerned, he’s not any more egotistical than you or me, he’s just an immature prima donna.

The fact is, there exists only a handful of brands that can expect to create a Twitter or Facebook account and see a mass exodus of people follow right away. For the other 99.999% of the companies not named Apple, the “if you build it, they will come” mentality is completely false. Unfortunately, many organizations interpret this to mean they don’t belong in the game of social networking and abandon all their efforts before they have a chance to ramp up.

Any group can find success utilizing social media with the right strategy as long as the metrics of success are correctly defined. Those metrics vary depending on the brand, which is why the very first step prior to proactive engagement should be due diligence. Understanding where one’s online audience exists will define the appropriate venues they should be engaging in. For example, if a brand’s research finds most of its target audience is engaging on niche message boards, it only makes sense that the brand insert itself into those conversations. From there, the brand can build relationships that will then begin to populate their Facebook page or own official message board.

It’s also important to stress that social media is not free. Sure, creating an account on a social network has no monetary cost, but the time it takes to properly utilize that account comes with a cost, as does the most often overlooked area of constructing a presence: advertising. Sure, one can always take the organic-only approach of building up a base of followers, but I’ve yet to find any medium-to-large organization that has the patience it takes to build a following of dedicated brand ambassadors this way, which is why social advertising such as through Facebook ads is so important in informing people that you’re “in the game.” The smaller or more niche a brand is, the more important a role advertising plays in growing one’s following.
I also find a large amount of organizations that have decided to connect with their audience through social media making the same mistake of not fully integrating it into their marketing mix. It’s simple really – if you want people to believe that your social networks are important, you need to show your audience that they are important. This includes placing links to your social profiles on your website, advertisements, email signatures and any other communications with your audience. It also means sending out a blast to your email list with a link to your profiles. Trust me, this is not spamming your list – if we care enough to sign up for your email list, we’re very likely to follow you on Twitter or “like” you on Facebook.

Social media does not and cannot function in a silo, and this must be understood if it’s to be properly utilized. Many customers will want to connect with an organization to simply stay current on news and announcement while many will wish to use it for customer service. Some may even wish to use it for investor relations purposes. The fact is, the users will try to define how a brand’s social presence is utilized and if the brand is not prepared to meet those needs, it’s going to have a very hard time of making meaningful connections that allow them to truly tap into the power of social media.

That being said, I do think there are a few points of etiquette that everyone should follow, even if they’re not violations of Twitter’s ToS.

1. No Auto DMs
Auto DMs are the work of the devil. Auto DMs are Twitter equivalent of the “first” post in a comments section. If I decide to follow you, I don’t need an automatically generated direct message sent back to me thanking me for the follow and giving me more ways to get in touch with you. This is why Twitter created the “bio” section – tell me about yourself there and show me who you are with the content you post in your timeline. Auto DMs should be a violation of Twitter as it’s spam in my eyes, and if I receive an auto DM from you, you get instantly unfollowed.

2. Don’t Retweet Every Response
The beauty of the “@ reply” is that I don’t have to read it if I’m not following the other person you’re talking to. This was done to prevent people from being exposed to useless conversations that won’t provide any value to them. I can’t tell you how many times I will see something along these lines:

Offender: The red one RT @OffendersFriend What dress are you wearing tonight?

Nobody outside of @Offender and @OffendersFriend cares about this discussion, so please, do us all a favor and get your finger away from the retweet button and move it over to the @ reply. There are instances where it’s perfectly acceptable to do a conversational retweet, but more often that not, it’s from someone with an enormous amount of followers and is asked the same question multiple times (AKA, not you). I hardly think the color of your dress is going to end up in a FAQ somewhere.

3. Don’t Follow for Follow
It’s comical the amount of people that do this. Every day I get about 10 or 20 new followers, and three days later they almost all unfollow me because I didn’t reciprocate the follow (aka “Follow Back”). The topic of “quality vs. quantity” in regards to Twitter followers has been beaten to death, but let’s face it…people like numbers and want to feel like they are better than others with enormous Twitter followers, even if they don’t care at all about you and what you say. Twitter followers are not Garbage Pail Kids cards – you don’t need to collect them all. If you are following me, please do so because you want to read what I say, not add me to your collection. Oh, and if you want me to follow you back, you should probably read this first.

4. Don’t Celebrate Follower Milestones
Big deal – you’re reaching you’re 1,000th follower. Nobody gives a crap except for you, so please don’t make any thinly veiled attempts of showing appreciation when we all know you’re tweet of “Only 6 more followers to 1,000 – I love you all” is just a ploy to get you more followers for your collection.

Did I miss any? If so, you know what to do. (hint: look below…see that comment box?)

No matter what Joe Fernandez says, there is currently no tool that can accurately automate the process of identifying influencers on specific topics throughout Twitter. The only way to do this is to immerse yourself into the conversational context data manually. In fact, my own Klout profile says I’m most influential on the topics of “Social Media,” “Marketing,” “New York Yankees,” “Media,” “Family,” and “Public Relations.” Now I can see where some of those terms may come in to play as I do social media and digital marketing for a living, but I rarely ever tweet about topics related to my family or families in general. Perhaps a better example is a friend of mine that ranks as an influencer in “football” when in fact she probably can’t even name more than five teams in the NFL!

Now Klout claims they get their content analysis data on influencers from semantically analyzing tweets for engagement and reach to see which topics one is most influential in, but clearly this is a flawed method. I’m not saying it’s 100% inaccurate, but there is bad data coming back here. In fact, I recently spoke to a Klout employee on how I was personally targeted for two of their perks, one for Disney’s “Tangled” film and the other for an NBA promotion; these are two topics that I really couldn’t care less about, yet somehow I received invitations for their swag. When I mentioned this to the employee, I was told “sometimes people slip through the cracks” as if that’s an acceptable answer. If I was a brand paying good money to target influencers and there were people slipping through the cracks, I’d be very upset, especially with the value of some of these perks brands are sending out.

I also asked Joe Fernandez how Klout measures ROI on their perk program after he made the statement that some brands were so thrilled with the results that they came back for another go and was given no clear answer. It appears, from my take on his reply, that brands are using this money as “experimental marketing” and waiting to see if there’s any long tail effect. With no required action by those who receive perks, it’s impossible to measure any sort of ROI. (Klout users that receive perks are not required to say or do anything. The hope is that they will enjoy the perk so much they talk about it on their own.)

All this being said, I find there is value to be had in using the Klout score in social media monitoring as it aids in identifying those Twitter users that “get it” versus those that are speaking to a disengaged audience. While I firmly believe that brands should listen to and treat all customers throughout social media as if they have 100 Klout, I’m a realist and know that sometimes that’s impossible, especially if you’re a brand with thousands of mentions per day. When it comes down to reputation management and someone with a Klout of 50 is talking about how much they hate your brand, you’re going to want to put them on a higher priority list than someone with a Klout of 8. This score gives marketers some data to go back to CMOs with that satiates their need for numbers and data clustering.

I don’t want to come off like a Klout hater – I’d love to see the service thrive, but only if it’s doing it right. I had many conversations around this topic this week and can say that there are many out there that loathe Klout and everything it stands for. I just want any tool out there that can help me make my job easier. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to finding a way to automate the influencer identification process as there are too many variables that go into what makes one influential, but of everything out there, Klout at least seems to be heading down the right path, even if that path is thousands of miles long.