Today at WOMM-U, our client Petina Dixon-Jenkins of Rotary International and Zócalo Account Director Vicky Assardo will present a workshop on Triumphs & Challenges, Creating Advocacy for a Global Cause.

In preparation for the workshop, we talked to Vicky and Petina about how they’ve been using word of mouth and social media to galvanize a new generation of Rotarians around the important campaign End Polio Now.

Follow the conversation about this and other great word of mouth marketing sessions organized by WOMMA on Twitter this week using #WOMMU.

Q: How do you see the power of recommendations and word of mouth play out in cause-related marketing?

A: When talking about a cause, we’re obviously not discussing the efficacy of a product, or its results – the conversation is focused more on the importance of the cause and the work that the organization is doing. So, as marketers, we need to shift our thinking to be less about how we garner a recommendation and more about how we utilize the power of that WOM connection to raise awareness.

Rotary International is already a well-known and respected organization globally, and the work that the organization has done when it comes to eradicating polio is outstanding. But, when it comes to the topic itself – polio – we’re talking something that isn’t relevant to much of population today, and certainly not to the younger generation—the next generation of Rotarians. So, we utilized the power of WOM to raise awareness of polio in general among this audience, being careful to articulate what it meant for them. And to do that we had to delve deeply not only into their habits, but also what resonates with them, and  what makes them care about issues—in both online and offline spaces.  - Vicky

Q: What’s the biggest challenge in activating a global community?

A: Our biggest challenge is activating a global community around a global health issue that much of the world believes is already gone—and doing it in 8 languages across multiple cultures.

Although a vaccine has existed since the 1950s, polio has never been stopped in three countries (Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan), and the threat of outbreaks remains. The good news is that with polio eradication, we are on the verge of making history by eradicating only the second human disease after smallpox. The idea of wiping out a disease in our lifetime is something that we can all be proud of. – Petina

Q: What’s one big success you’ve seen from your WOM efforts?

A: We have seen Rotary’s “End Polio Now” Facebook and Twitter followers double from 2012 to 2013. Due in part to our increased engagement in the social space—activating our members and our celebrity ambassadors– our website, endpolionow.org, has increased page visitors by more than 200 percent compared to a year prior. A recent win that drew some cheers was UNICEF Ambassador David Beckham posting about our campaign—sharing the message with his 25 million facebook fans- on Rotary’s anniversary. – Petina

Q: What do you think the biggest social, digital or mobile trend of 2013 will be?

 A: This is a hard question to answer as due to the nature of this world, trends change daily, hourly even, let alone by the year!  But, there are a few themes that are hot topics right now, and which I think will be long term.  One theme that we’re seeing a lot of right now is how brands are looking more and more to being able to connect their social activities with e-commerce.

Late last year Facebook introduced e-commerce based on user data, and re-designed their timeline just a couple of months ago, allowing much more space for ads.  And, just yesterday, the big news from Pinterest was their move to Rich Pins, offering users more information—such as “where to buy”—directly under pins.  This is currently being tested with key retailers, but sure to roll out soon.  Research suggests that global social commerce sales will reach $30 billion by 2015, so we need to be taking note of this, and integrating it into our work.  As an agency, we’re continually looking to finesse the way we are able to track social results back to sales—this gets us just one step closer to that.

Something else that I think plays into this same idea, is the closer integration that we’re seeing between social platforms–Facebook’s purchase of Instagram and now Yahoo’s purchase of Tumblr; new apps, such as Vine, that are usable and interchangeable between platforms meaning that more and more of our activities are being linked closer and closer together. - Vicky

-Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category. 

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It’s that time of the year again when we all purchase advanced-screening tickets, stay up past midnight and wait in long lines to be one of the first to watch and experience the wonders that is the Summer Blockbuster. Fun fact: While modern era critics consider the term “blockbuster” as a genre to describe a big and successful production, the first use of the term to describe the long line of fans wrapped around a city block to see a movie was the 1975 Academy Award winner JAWS. With the innovation of mega 30-screen movie complexes, fans can now wait patiently in line for hours in air-conditioned hallways and tweet, check-in on FourSquare and GetGlue the time away.

So, what summer movies will the world be lining up to see this year?  I took to Radian6 to measure and see which top blockbuster films fans are talking about the most on social media sites Facebook and Twitter.

1.     Iron Man 3 – It’s really no surprise that, following The Avengers becoming the third-highest grossing movie of all time, the first Marvel movie to kick off “Phase 2” of Marvel’s genius continuity of comic hero storylines is Robert Downey Jr.’s return as billionaire-playboy-philanthropist Tony Stark. With an early May 3^rd release date, impressive movie trailers and non-stop promotions, it’s everything you would expect from a summer blockbuster this early in the season.

2.     The Great Gatsby – The only other film to hit the box office before the rest includes an all-star cast of DiCaprio, Mulligan and Maguire: Baz Luhrmann’s (of Moulin Rouge fame) adaptation of the high-school curricular 1925 classic The Great Gatsby. While the buzz around the film was moderate leading up to the release date, fans quickly took to social media to voice their praise, not only for the visual representation of the era, but their tremendous love for the film’s soundtrack, scored by hip-hop legend Jay-Z.  Showcasing a trademark of Luhrmann’s to include popular modern music in period-piece films, the soundtrack features artists like Beyoncé and Florence + the Machine.

3.     Fast & Furious 6 – Pump the brakes! Fast 6 beat out the likes of Star Trek and Superman? It sure did. Do keep in mind this film is only days away from release. Amped up marketing, along with the intense action sequences, hot cars and chase scenes synonymous with the franchise have fans chatting with friends to determine which of the latest big May movie releases to see first. With return of The Rock and the infamous outlaws we’ve grown to love since the first film back in 2001, I for one am ready to buckle up and enjoy the ride.

4.     Star Trek Into Darkness – Just squeezing by the Man of Steel, which is nearly a month away from its release, Star Trek fans have been lacking in the social department as the film released this weekend. The lackluster amount of mentions made me think Star Trek fans were more interested in seeing the movie before they geek out and talk about it with friends via word-of-mouth and forums. I don’t blame them. There appear to be many surprises in store for the Enterprise and J.J. Abrams is not one to disappoint diehard fans.

5.     Man of Steel – One thing Warner Bros. does well is creative word-of-mouth and viral marketing campaigns to generate buzz around its DC properties. With deciphered kryptonian radio signals counting down to the reveal of official theatrical trailers, General Zod’s secret broadcast to the world that #YouAreNotAlone and an exclusive advanced ticket promotion with Walmart allowing fans the opportunity to attend one of the first screenings of Man of Steel at their local theater before June 14^th has everyone tweeting to #SeeSteelFirst. As a Superman fanatic with the tattoo to prove it, I know for certain that 29 days from now, social media buzz will soar to the skies as the most talked about movie of the year. This movie tops my list as the most anticipated film of the year.

Here’s the full list of the top 10 most anticipated 2013 Summer Blockbusters on social media. What are you most excited to see?

*Data is aggregated total of mentions from Facebook and Twitter in the past 30 days as of May 17^th via Radian6.

-Ryan Choyeski is a senior account executive at Zócalo Group. Follow him on Twitter at @rychoy. Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category.

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Like all genres of music, rap’s biggest stars have always been the best storytellers. Fans have, and will always, gravitate to topics they can relate to, like heartbreak, love, tragedy and being a little bit taller. At its best, rap takes familiar subject matter and breaks it down in a new way – and hopefully with a fresh beat – to offer a unique insight to the world.

Which is not to say that everything always stays the same in the rap world. The advent of the digital age means more music is available than ever, which means there are more rappers out now than ever. And much like social media has changed the way “news” is disseminated to the world, and perhaps most importantly, what we choose to share about ourselves, rap has changed in tandem with that trend. In 25 years, we have quite literally gone from the N.W.A rapping about their criticisms of local police’s treatment of the African American community (and being targeted by the Parents Music Resource Center for doing so), to Drake rapping about eating scallops. But just how jarring has the change been?

Noticing a trend in rappers becoming more self aware and less boastful, I sought out to identify just how many rappers were talking social media in their songs. Using Rap Genius as a database, I looked at how many social media platforms have been mentioned in rap songs. I did separate searches for the most prominent networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Tumblr and Friendster (as a side note: rappers love mentioning Mapquest but as it isn’t technically a social network, I left it out).

The results were consistent with what you might expect. Twitter and Facebook were far and away the most popular sites to mention, a reflection of their current place in society, with MySpace a distant third. Somewhat curiously, Friendster only had two less mentions than Foursquare, which suggests checking in hasn’t found its place in the rapping community yet, but don’t be surprised if in the next six months Lil Wayne ends a rhyme with “Foursquare check-in; mayor.”

Special shout outs are owed to two rappers. Childish Gambino, with mentions of five of the six social network search terms in his rhymes, officially earns the title as most word of mouth friendly rapper out there. And Lil B, who on his track “Age of Information” is able to reference MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, or as it’s known in rapping circles, rapping for the cycle (I can’t verify this last part).

So, as Murphy Lee himself once asked, Wat Da Hook Gon Be?

Here are four predictions for the continued merger of rap and social media:

 1.       Real-time feedback will start dictating concert set lists.

We’ve already seen this in various iterations going back to SXSW and from post-jam prog stalwarts Umphrey’s McGee, but rappers have embraced Twitter enough to start using it before, during and after their shows, so this will be a logical extension of that (I personally hope R. Kelly employs this before his upcoming Pitchfork concert so I can exclusively request to hear songs of Chocolate Factory).

2.       Entire rap concerts will be available in segmented Vine video clips.

Concerts have been streaming online for a while now. This seems like the next step from a free marketing and branding perspective. Plus it’s quirky enough to appeal some hungry Bay Area upstart looking to bring hyphy to the masses.

3.       Rappers will start chirping more than usual.

It almost makes too much sense. Using the app Chirp’s ability to send messages through a two second long chirp noise (other smartphones must have Chirp installed already to receive the message), it’s hard not to see this app becoming a staple at live concerts to allow rappers to further connect with their fans, and hopefully, replace this noise once and for all.

4.       Snapchat will become the new rapper-approved social media tool for giveaways.

Following Taco Bell’s lead, I expect both brands and rappers alike will start taking advantage of Snapchat’s ability to mass message followers exclusive offers. The visual component of Snapchat makes receiving a message seem more personable, while its quick expiration (messages often only last five seconds) add an air of excitement to each message. Besides, who among us hasn’t wanted to say “Hold on, Earl Sweatshirt just hit me up on Snapchat”?

So before you head to your next rap concert, make sure to charge your phone and update all of your apps. It’s the good life indeed, T-Pain.

-Danny Weiss is a senior account executive at Zócalo Group. Follow him on Twitter at @theDweiss. Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: I Wanna Thank My Connect: Rapping on social media appeared first on Zócalo Group.

With more than 591 million people taking to US skies in 2012, airports offer the foot traffic that brands dream of. Flight delays, layovers and other factors make airports prime realty for airlines and brands to engage with customers via social media. Both airlines and non-aeronautical brands are starting to take notice.

A recent survey from Viralheat gathered social media mentions at domestic airports for the second half of March 2013.  The corresponding infographic tells us which airlines have the highest positive sentiment and which airports are the most social media savvy.

via Viralheat

Airlines are using the power of social media to provide costumers perks, customer service and general brand engagement. Several airlines have mapped the value of social media performance to business goals, with the top three being 1) brand engagement 2) customer service 3) revenue.

American Airlines recently partnered with Klout to offer customers with a Klout score over 55 access to a slew of the airline’s luxurious Admiral Clubs across the nation. Here guests get to enjoy personalized service, comfort and exceptional amenities in exchange for their Klout engagement.

via SimpliFlying

Airlines aren’t the only ones tapping into the sea of people airports offer on a daily basis. Non-aeronautical brand integration is something that has also begun to pick up momentum. “The use of social media to target travelers for specials, and to push discounts can influence purchases and visits to the shopping and dining facilities at the airports” says Shashank Nigam, CEO of SimpliFlying. Brands do this through partnerships with airport vendors and concessionaires.

The number of travelers using tablets and smartphones at airports to kill time increases on a daily basis while delays and layovers remain steady…making for the perfect opportunity for brands to make their mark in this aviation goldmine.

-Shawn Savage is an Account Executive at Zócalo Group. Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category. 

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The idiom “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” epitomizes big data. Whether you’ve heard the buzzy phrase “big data” or not, know that it’s affecting your life. So, WTF is big data? At its core, big data is still just data… but it’s also the ability to extract meaning from the massive amounts of it being created every second. In our digitally connected world, so much data is being generated that the amount of data becomes difficult to capture, curate, store, search, share, transfer, analyze and visualize.

Even having defined it simply, it’s still really hard to fully grasp how big data pertains to our lives and what value exists in unlocking its secrets. I recently attended TEDx Midwest and Rick Smolan, one of the speakers, was struggling with this too, so he made a book. Rick has been a photographer for TIME, LIFE, and National Geographic, so he focused his lens on the concept of Big Data and has created an amazing book called “The Human Face of Big Data”  which highlights how the digital exhaust we’re creating and gathering is helping the planet develop a nervous system.

Below are 6 important ideas & visuals from Rick’s talk about “The Human Face of Big Data” that can help us understand how much data exists and recognize how valuable it can be:

1. Big data has always existed

Photo: George Skadding

This is big data, circa 1943. During J. Edgar Hoover’s time, the FBI’s records department contained the largest private cache of personal information, 112M fingerprint files, and 85K volumes of law documents. Now we have both more data and more computing power to process it than ever.

2. Our digital exhaust is creating vast amounts of data

Photo: Catherine Balet

During the first day of a baby’s life, the amount of data generated is equivalent to 70 times the information contained in the Library of Congress. According to babycenter.com, the average “digital birth” of children occurs at 6 months and by the age of 2, 92% of children have some sort of online presence (at the very least a shared sonogram).

3. We have to navigate more data than ever before… and it’s increasing

Photo: Stephen Wilkes

The average person today processes more data in a single day than a person in the 1500s did in an entire lifetime. “From the dawn of civilization until 2003, humankind generated five exabytes of data. Now we produce five exabytes every two days … and the pace is accelerating.” – Eric Schmidt, Exec Chairman, Google. (FYI… 1 exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes). As every person with a digital device has become a human sensor, the digital exhaust being created has exponentially grown. That said, it might seem like a lot, but truth is, 2013 is still the caveman days of big data.

4. Saving data can help save lives

Photos: Above left, Jason Grow; Above (top right), Ben Edwards; Above (lower right), BSIP/CORBIS

Modern medicine is overflowing with data, but valuable data often lurks in what we initially perceive as noise. By mining through massive amounts of EKG data on heart attack patients that had been previously dismissed, Computer scientists from MIT have discovered a correlation between three abnormalities and patients with a 2x to 3x higher risk of dying from a second heart attack within a year. Most people recover simply by eating better and exercising, but the 5% who this affects need much more aggressive intervention. Now we can identify them.

5. Big data helps us figure out how we impact the planet

Photos and Image: MIT SENSEable City Lab

One man’s trash is another man’s data… literally. MIT researchers tracked a bunch of trash to see where it ended up. In one case, they discovered a printer cartridge that travelled nearly 4,000 miles to a specialized facility… negating all the carbon gains from its recycling and highlighting systemic inefficiency.

6. Big data can help us age well and raise our quality of life

Photo: Kendrick Brinson

In most countries, the 60+ demographic is growing faster than any other age group. “Active Aging” or “Aging in Place” is a concept that is being enabled by big data. For example, Intel-GE Care Innovations has prototyped a technology called the Magic Carpet. It’s an actual carpet with sensors and accelerometers that sense, observe, and learn the patterns of a person’s typical routine. Then, in the case of any anomalies, like dad moving slower than normal or mom not walking across it at 7 a.m., it can send notifications to family.

What’s really cool about “The Human Face of Big Data” is that with these amazing visuals and stories, something that is initially hard to grasp both in concept and in application becomes perfectly logical and makes simple sense to us all. Recognizing the powerful insight that can be unlocked from big data is an important thing for everyone, because if you throw away that data… you’ll never find the treasure and secrets hidden within.

All photos are from Rick Smolan’s “The Human Face of Big Data.” If you want to get a sense of the amazing stories the book contains, you can download the app from iTunes. It has more details about these stories and more than 30 others.

- Jordan Ho is a digital strategist at Zócalo Group.  Follow him on Twitter at @sneakstar. Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category. 

The post One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s… Big Data appeared first on Zócalo Group.

Today’s business challenges, marketing channels and target audiences are far too complex to be solved with a one-shot marketing approach.  Brands need and demand integrated solutions to drive a holistic, surround-sound approach to awareness, engagement, sales and advocacy.  But, cracking the code on how best to integrate remains a challenge internally within agency and client departments and externally among agency teams.  Highly functioning Integrated Agency Teams are a strategic advantage to any company but for some agency partners can be a time-intensive, trial-and-error-filled dance of sorts.

By nature of our work in word of mouth, social and digital, Zócalo Group has long worked as a core and sometimes lead agency in integrated or multi-agency teams.  It’s just how we do the work we do.  However, each new client relationship and introduction to the other agency partners reminds us that integration takes effort and a willingness to succeed.

Eleanor Roosevelt said “You never know anyone until you marry them.”  And there’s much also to learn about your marketing partners.

Maybe the tenets of a successful relationship (i.e. marriage) hold some promise for how agencies, departments or diverse functions can best approach integration?  Granted we chose those we are in relationships with, while integrated agency teams don’t offer much of, if any, dating period.  But by choice or not, each arrangement does come with benefits to those who successfully work together.

These rules of a successful marriage apply to successful integration:

1. It takes ongoing effort.  Marriage is neither easy nor something you set on autopilot.  It takes thoughtful time and attention – from all parties involved.  Successful integration is no different.  All parties must contribute although it may not always be in equal measure.  Similar to the adage that “to have friends, you must be a friend,” integration must come with a similar belief.

2. You can’t always lead.  Maintaining a relationship requires a healthy to-do list.  Early on, couples recognize who most excels at specific tasks ranging from laundry to financial planning.  Likewise, integration works best when the lead ebbs and flows based on the key initiatives of focus at the time.  The overall delineation of roles, however, really should start with the client.

3. You must commit.  You’ve got to want to be married in order to successfully do so.  Ditto on integration.  Evolved agencies do so because they know it leads to the best results for their clients.  And increasingly, examples of successfully working as an integrated partner are table-stakes-experience as brands consider new assignments among agencies.

4. Maintain your identity.  Relationships can become toxic when one partner depends too heavily on the other or fades too far into the relationship.  The strongest integrated teams are those where the agencies still have opportunity to shine individually.  Likewise, integration shouldn’t replace individual accountability for results.

5. Don’t forget the spice.  “Working smoothly” left to its own devices can become “boring” if you aren’t watching carefully.  Today’s well-functioning integrated agency teams learn to flex and jump into or create new opportunities.  An integrated team that’s simply working the plan might need a bigger challenge.

What relationship advice would you offer your integrated agency team?  What signs are you missing that it’s not working, or how might you approach your next integration meeting in a way that shows you are committed?

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More so than January 1, the start of spring has always felt like the beginning of a new year. Everything comes to life and we quickly move to “spring clean” our homes and lives in preparation to have more time to enjoy the coming season ahead. Hello, Zócalo summer hours!

Much like we use this time to take inventory of our homes and closets, it’s an ideal time to evaluate, reorganize and make resolutions for our digital strategy. As a personal social media user and a marketer representing brands on digital channels, I recommend four digital spring cleaning tips you’ll be glad you tackled sooner rather than later:

Safeguard your assets

As LivingSocial, Evernote, and the Associated Press could tell you, many brands have seen breaches in cybersecurity this year, proving just how important it is to protect your online assets. Twitter has even stated that they expect data breaches will continue. At the very least, make it a point to keep your passwords unique to each site, and to change them often. Put a reminder on your calendar to once a quarter update your passwords and settings, and review security plans with teams and clients often.

Take a good look at what you have on display

Sometimes it pays off to see things through the eyes of a visitor. Honestly, I no longer even notice the cat meme shrine on the other side of desk that my colleagues so loving created while I made the mistake of stepping away. However, as soon as someone else comes looking for my cube, I guarantee this odd display that I don’t even think about is the first thing they notice.

Social profiles are the same way – we become so accustomed to scrolling our newsfeed, with a quick check of the photo we’re tagged in and like and RT here and there, that we often don’t think about what we’re presenting overall. Stop and take a moment to see what a visitor would find if they were to Google you and check out your social profiles, and consider everything, including search results, events, groups, likes, follows, tags, etc. Do these items still represent the you or the brand that you that you want to be seen as? Clear out and reorganize what is no longer relevant.

Check your locks

When was the last time you checked your privacy settings on your social networks? Of all the things I love about social media, the seemingly ever-changing privacy settings are not one of them. Advice to “secure your social profiles” is not new, however, making it a point to check that your settings are as you last left them bears reminding. On more than one occasion, I’ve been surprised to find that things were not as I had left them (ahem, Facebook). Regular checks to make sure your personal and brand social profiles are as open or private as they need to be are essential to avoiding an “oops” moment later.

Put your things in storage

Instagram states that 90 million users are uploading 40 million photos to the photo sharing site… Daily. We’ll just go ahead and calculate that as an infinite amount of memories stored virtually in the form of an Instagram photo. That’s not taking into account Flickr, Facebook and all the photos that haven’t yet made it off our iPhone photo rolls.

As we’ve seen in recent news, social networks are not immune to data breaches. iPhones are not infallible. What would you do if one day all your photos were lost?

Don’t wait to find out. Clean up your photo rolls and sync your files to the cloud. Try an app like Trovebox, which imports your photos from Facebook, Instragram, Flickr, your phone and your PC, and stores them in a designated cloud-based program, like Dropbox.

You’ll be glad you did… especially on the day that your phone spontaneously refuses to ever turn on again immediately after you’ve downloaded your photo library. True story.

What other digital and social “spring cleaning” tips are you accomplishing for yourself and the brands you manage?

As for me, I’m going to take my own advice and spring clean my cubicle before summer hours start. Spring sure seems like a great time to return the favor and have those cat memes stay with another colleague for the season, doesn’t it?

-Julie Kowik is a Senior Account Executive at Zócalo Group. Follow her on Twitter at @juliealesandra. Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: to help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category. 

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By Alexandra Baird

We know that brands will only see meaningful engagement when they put people at the center of their Facebook strategies. But even with insightful, brilliant creative ideas executed perfectly, it’s still highly unlikely that most fans will see a given post. In fact, you may have heard the dreaded 16% statistic: the maximum percentage of users expected to see a page’s post.

As part of our Leadership Series event, Zócalo Group recently invited representatives from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Outbrain and AOL to our offices to talk to us and some of our clients about what’s next in paid social media.

Facebook referenced the 16% statistic, and discussed different ways to put cash behind campaigns to increase those sad numbers. This Ben & Jerry’s case study is powerful, with results including 98% of fans reached and a 3X return on investment.

Click to watch on Facebook

Here are three of the top takeaways about Facebook advertising:

1.       Diverse ad types can conquer ad blindness.

Facebook is moving away from those right-hand marketplace ads, which can be more prone to “banner blindness,” and toward sponsored stories and posts in the newsfeed. Because these types of ads are in the place where we look for updates from our friends and pages we like, they’re more likely to be seen and clicked on.

Facebook is also trying to conquer ad blindness with log-out units– those large ads that take over much of the screen when you log out on a desktop. While these ads allow for a rich media experience, they can currently only be targeted broadly (to adults 18+ or 21+) and are pricey, out of the realm of most advertisers.

Another frontier where ads are beginning to pop up is Facebook Graph Search. While the ads on this beta feature aren’t very complex yet, Facebook hinted at a growing array of options for advertising against search terms.

2.       People matter above all.

Ad types that tie in social connections, such as those who tell you what your friends have “liked,” tend to perform the best. Friends of fans are an incredibly powerful group, which can be reached directly via Facebook ad targeting on marketplace ads, sponsored stories and promoted posts.

3.       Rich user data is here… and growing.

Facebook knows a lot about its users based on what they share on the platform, as well as what they do off of it. Facebook Exchange and partner categories use third-party data to allow advertisers to target people very specifically. In other words, Facebook can “see” what you’re doing off its site, too (even offline), then use all of that data to serve up very specific ads.

For advertisers, this means they can target recent mortgage borrowers with furniture ads, or serve up an ad for a car a user was just looking at on another site. With all of this data, the possibilities are astounding. While some Facebook users might cringe at this level of targeting, they’ll also be seeing more and more ads for things they are actually interested in.

-Alexandra Baird is an Assistant Account Executive at Zócalo Group. Follow her on Twitter at@alexandra_baird. Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category.

The post Leveraging The Power of Facebook Advertising: Three Things To Know appeared first on Zócalo Group.

This is the first in a series of columns designed to keep you informed about the latest social media tools and platforms to keep an eye on. Stay tuned for more, and click here to download a PDF of this content.

TOPSY: REAL-TIME SOCIAL INSIGHT

What it is

• Instantly access real-time and multi-year social web data. Detect and follow breaking news. Analyze your own or your competitors’ campaigns and web-sites. Correlate social web activity with real-world data to accurately predict outcomes.

How it works

• Three things lie at the heart of Topsy’s platform – a real-time counting and metrics machine; a dynamically-sorted index of the social web; and a data enrichment system. Together, these technologies form one of the largest “big data” projects; they’ve indexed over 100 billion items.

What it means 

• Brands or account teams can instantly see the top search results for events in real-time, or analyze historical trends just as quickly. Get a full picture of events as they unfold by seeing photos, videos, tweets and websites immediately as they’re shared.

TWERIOD: TELLS YOU WHEN TO TWEET

What it is

• Tweriod is a free Twitter tool that helps one make the most of the platform by letting you know the best time to tweet. The free analysis will analyze up to 1000 of a brand’s followers.

How it works

• Tweriod is a tool one can use to analyze a brand’s followers streams to help them figure out when most of their followers are active on twitter. Instead of relying on general “best time to tweet” parameters, the personalized analysis report, delivered via DM or email, will enable tweeting when it makes most sense to reach the target audience.

What it means

• Tweriod would be useful for both brands and community managers alike. Knowing when YOUR followers are on Twitter will give you the best times to tweet your info.

INSPARQ: SOCIAL COMMERCE PLATFORM

What it is

• inSparq offers the only real-time discovery platform for brands and retailers to create dynamic shopping experiences for their customers.

How it works

• inSparq is a social commerce platform provider that develops features for online retailers such as sharing widgets, on-site live Pinboards and analytics to measure how all of that and more are performing to help sell things.

What it means

• inSparq LIVE PINBOARD enables retailers to showcase a dynamic feed of products that are trending in real-time, optimizing social product discovery. It helps customers make purchase decisions by surfacing the most popular products on the site and allowing customers to share and comment on products they love.

What it is

• Piqora, formerly Pinfluenster,  is a complete marketing suite for Pinterest (the 3^rd most popular social network in the U.S.) Products include Promotions, Content Management, Social Commerce and Analytics.

How it works

• In addition to standard stats like total number of pins, repins, clicks and page views, marketers can track revenue from purchases that stemmed from a contest. Pinfluencer can also calculate the total potential reach of contest-related pins and the influencer scores of participating users. Brands can use that data to see what content performs best on Pinterest.

What it means

• The idea is for brands to use the platform to set up contests and sweepstakes on Facebook or the brands’ own sites that tie in the social scrapbooking site. Hosting a Pinterest contest on Facebook would enable brands to convert their Facebook fans into Pinterest followers, cross-pollinating the bases.

-Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category.

The post Tools to Watch: Topsy, Tweriod, inSparq and Piqora appeared first on Zócalo Group.

With the growth of technology and mobile devices people are getting what they want faster each and every day. Just look around the next time you are on your commute to work or waiting in line at your local coffee shop. Society is “Go! Go! Go!” on their iPhones, Blackberries, Android devices, or some form of a smart device.

• “Traffic to mobile websites in 2010 grew 600% after tripling between 2009 and 2010″ -Mobile First
• Facebook has more than 600 million monthly mobile users and has seen a 57 percent year-on-year growth rate of mobile active users. – The Next Web

What changed to flip the switch for this huge growth in mobile? I will need to take you back to 2006, right before the iPhone was released. The most popular phone on the market at this time was the Motorola RZR. You may have owned one of these phones. It came in multiple colors and was super slim. While this phone and others at the time had a “web browser,” the Internet experience was terrible on it. The following year, Apple released the iPhone and that changed the mobile industry to what we have today.

The iPhone was one of the most advanced phones of its time and introduced a whole new way to look at the Internet. The iPhone offered a brand-new experience to the users’ fingertips. Now it is 2013 and we have an additional 6 years of advancements and new technologies. We have mobile devices controlling mobile devices.

Mobile first is the idea that websites should be designed first for mobile, then for desktop. After learning about mobile first I am more conscious about making smarter decisions while building my web applications. It has also taught me to ask myself: How can I make this a better experience for my users?

Next time you want to build a website, ask yourself: What device will people view my website on?

One last note: I wrote this entire blog article from my iPad.

- Zach Schneider is an Interactive Developer at Zócalo Group. Follow him on Twitter at @ZKM. Zócalo Group is an award-winning word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency focused on one thing: To help our clients become the most talked about, recommended and chosen brands in their category.

The post Mobile First: What it means, why it matters appeared first on Zócalo Group.