The State of Social Media and Social Media Marketing in the Second Half of 2012

The rise of social media has led to a complete shift in how people communicate, enabling us to create online versions of ourselves while engaging with friends, strangers and everyone in between. Social media has not only affected our communication habits, but it has also transformed and created entire industries.

As the social media landscape expands and evolves, businesses debate its potential to influence consumer behavior. Traditional methods of marketing and advertising have been around for decades and most companies are comfortable with the idea of TV ratings and billboard impressions. But making sense of social media? Well, that's not easy, especially for executives and entrepreneurs. 

For companies of all sizes, the questions around social media are many. Here are some of the type of questions I often hear:

• Are social media conversations really impacting brand reputation? 
• Should we listen or participate? 
• Should we spend our time, effort and money in content that seems to disappear? 
• Are the social networks going to "own" us by keeping us within their closed gardens?
• If Facebook has so many users, how come nobody cares about our page?
• We're posting content every day but we're not selling anything as a result of it. Why?
• Surely we can just outsource this whole social media thing to avoid costs, right? 
• Should we invest to get the most likes, followers, subscribers?
• Should we trend on Twitter or go viral on YouTube? 
• Why are there so many articles about Google+ being a ghost town? 
• Our competitors are not in social media so we should avoid it too, right?
• Do we have to bring in consultants or should we hire people ourselves?
• What is the difference between a check-in and a Groupon?
• Facebook acquired a photo app for how much? Do we have to build a page there too?

On and on the questions go.

And in the meantime, the social media landscape keeps changing.

In the last six months alone, Facebook has gone public, Instagram was acquired for $1B, Kevin Rose joined Google, Socialcam and Viddy went viral, Pinterest stopped going viral, Google+ passed Twitter in number of monthly active users, LinkedIn acquired SlideShare, Microsoft launched something called "Socl" and Zynga started showing Facebook ads.

There is much to learn about the opportunity and risk that lies within the networks that are building human graphs online. 

My advice for companies of all sizes is to take this seriously. Your competitors are taking it seriously. Your future competitors are not only taking it seriously, they're making it a priority. 

In order to help you navigate what's happened in the last six months and what it all means, I've created a presentation about the state of social media in the second half of 2012, from a marketer's perspective. This is a follow-up to another presentation I published on January 1st. That one has been viewed 140,000 times and I hope this follow-up will be as useful as the original. This presentation will not answer the questions above but it will help you think about such questions in the right content.

I've already received some feedback: the good "very comprehensive!," the bad "overwhelming amount of slides!," and the ugly "you're wrong about Google+." If you haven't seen it yet, check it out below and let me know what you think.

2H12: The State of Social Media & Social Media Marketing in the Second Half of 2012

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Pinerly Founder Rick Kats on Pinning and Going Beyond Pinterest

Rick Kats is the founder and CEO of Pinerly, a startup that help you easily market visual content on Pinterest. With the rising popularity of virtual pinboards, Pinerly has taken on the challenge of helping content creators post, optimize and measure their pins. In this interview, Rick shares about the tool's value proposition, as well as the past, present and future of the company.

"We are basically building the tools that we wished others would have built for us."

Social Nerdia: What's the story of the development of Pinerly?

Rick Kats: The inspiration behind Pinerly came from marketing our old business setNight using Pinterest. After just a few days of pinning, we noticed a huge 30% increase in our traffic! Although it was a lot of fun to pin our content, our biggest pain was trying to measure the amount of traffic brought to us from certain pins - ROI or return on our time - so that we could maximize on our returns. This was the fundamental reason why we started Pinerly: to help content creators and brands, like ourselves, easily post and measure visual content onto social media sites. We are basically building the tools that we wished others would have built for us.

Social Nerdia: Pinerly's early users had to invite 10 others before they could beta test the service. What have you learned from leveraging this tactic to drive adoption and interest?

RK: Our invite method allowed us to validate the need for this type of product in the market. It also allows us to get valuable feedback so we can fix bugs and deliver the best possible products. On each iteration of invites to Pinerly we learn new things about what our users like and don’t, so that we can make the necessary improvements. We’re extremely thankful for all the comments our users have made so far.

Social Nerdia: Campaign analytics is your current core feature. Is your target market made up of individual avid Pinterest users or organizations in need of serious analytics?

RK: The campaign and Pinalytics features are certainly the core features on Pinerly. What we allow you to do is easily post and measure click-throughs, re-pins, and likes on visual content pinned through Pinerly. In a similar process to Pinterest, you select an image or input a URL to fetch the images, add a description, add a destination URL and then post the pin onto Pinterest. Once you do this, you are able to easily compare the campaigns against each other and see which work better and try to understand why.

Rather than just regular Pinterest users, our target audience are content creators and sellers of goods (brands). Our users understand that a small change in their strategy can increase their returns, ultimately, bringing more people to their blog, website, or sales page. We see many businesses trying to just push content out there, whether it’s relevant or not. Some are doing great, but others aren’t. Social media is more than just pushing content, it is about having the right approach and really understanding what it is that works. This is where Pinerly comes in.

Pinerly surfaces the most relevant statistics to allow users to see which campaigns performed the best. This helps our users optimize their content, posting times, descriptions, and board names to drive more traffic to their site. Our whole idea is to build the tools businesses need to easily post and measure their visual content. This allows them to develop a good marketing strategy do that they can work smarter and a lot more efficiently.

Social Nerdia: The "scheduling" feature created a lot of initial interest in Pinerly. What are you doing to get this feature right and when will users be able to try it?

RK: For the scheduling feature, we are completely dependent on the release of the Pinterest API – ability for third party services to post data to Pinterest. As soon as Pinterest publicly releases its API we will be able to flip the switch and enable this feature. More on this here.

One of the most important things about Pinterest is to disperse the pins over time and get the posting times right. So instead of just pinning everything at once, you are able to pin something found in the morning will be posted to keep your followers engaged. We hope that this will allow many avid pinners do all of their pinning in one time and concentrate more on the things that matter: spend time engaging with their followers, customers, users, or even with their family.

Social Nerdia: Other startups like PinPuff are looking to identify influence on Pinterest. Is reputation management in Pinerly's future?

RK: No. Our goal is to help content creators, sellers and brands build a good marketing strategy in the social media space using their visual content. Reputation management is not a part of that.

Social Nerdia: Some have criticized Pinerly for driving attribution to Pinerly via the source of pins. Is this going to change in the future?

RK: We discuss this topic here: Pinerly as the Source - Why we did it.

Social Nerdia: Are you planning to expand Pinerly beyond Pinterest and integrate with other social networks?

RK: Yes. Twitter and Facebook introduced the potential available for brands to utilize the social space, and Pinterest is one of many services to provide a whole new way to discover content or products in a visual way. It provides a new way of thinking about products by selling them as a lifestyle rather than just an item.

Therefore, Pinterest is our starting point for measuring visual content, but it certainly isn’t the only platform that could help our users expose their brand and drive traffic to their sites. There are many other visual social media sides that are growing very quickly so we plan to incorporate those in the near future as well. 

Social Nerdia: What advice would you give to Pinterest users who would like to get more repins and followers?

RK: Have a look at our cheat sheet. At the end of the post, we also list all of our previous posts that discuss best practices to help you optimize your visual content.

vid.io Founder Rob Sandie Talks About Entrepreneurship, Video Management and Moving to San Francisco

Rob Sandie is the founder of vid.io, a new startup that helps companies with the management of video and marketing on YouTube. vid.io is currently accepting applications for beta access and it has already been called the "HootSuite for video." I've been able to test vid.io and I'm excited to see where Rob takes the tool and company, especially because this is his second startup - Viddler being his first. In this interview, Rob shares about the problems vid.io hopes to solve, his thoughts on the startup scene, and insights from his experiences as an entrepreneur.

"Time is your most valuable asset. Hustle. Fail fast. Do what you love."

Social Nerdia: You haven't yet publicly shared details about vid.io but you did mention that you're "rethinking the entire video management paradigm." What are some of the greatest pain points in online video management today?

Rob Sandie: YouTube accounts for 70% of video minutes viewed online. It's also the second largest search engine. A brand should be focusing everything on YouTube. It's not about SEO anymore. It's about YTO (YouTube Tag Optimization). It's not about Branded Players anymore. It's about Branded Channels. Many social media marketers are forced to choose from a consumer tool (YouTube) and/or video platforms that are focused on an entirely separate CMS that consider YouTube a "syndication." It's about time that video was done right and vid.io is hoping to accomplish this.

Social Nerdia: vid.io is your second startup. What does it mean to you at a personal and professional level?

RS: My first startup began out of my dorm room at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Not your ideal startup location but was able to grow to a multi-million dollar/year profitable business. A difficult endeavor that took 6 years but something I am very proud of and proof you can start a company almost anywhere nowadays. Today vid.io (second startup) is located out of San Francisco. Have been here for 2 months and it's an awesome feeling. Best way to describe it is it's felt like for the last 6 years on the east coast I have been climbing a steep snow covered mountain with wind in my face. Being in San Francisco feels like skiing down that mountain with the wind at my back. That being said San Francisco has it's own challenges. Finding talent being the biggest. Fortunately having built a company with a network of developers that worked with in the past and credibility from that has made working with awesome talent a non-issue so far.

Social Nerdia: Mobile apps continue to get a lot of attention, especially after Facebook's $1B acquisition of Instagram. What are your thoughts on Viddy and Socialcam?

RS: Video recording mobile apps have existed for a while. I think of SocialCam and Viddy as companies that are more well known for doing a great job of leveraging the Facebook Opengraph.

Social Nerdia: What do you think Facebook's IPO means for the rest of the tech industry?

RS: It clearly hasn't gone as planned. Wish it was doing well as if Facebook was at 40 right now, we might be seeing more angel investors.

Social Nerdia: Getting back to online video, what do you think about original series getting created by Hulu, Netflix and YouTube?

RS: Sounds like the future of television.

Social Nerdia: With Viddler, what did you learn about being a tech entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley?

RS: I hope it's generated a skeptical eye for hype.

Social Nerdia: After 6 years of leading Viddler as CEO and President, you had to step down involuntarily. What was that like and what have you learned from the experience?

RS: Not the greatest thing at the time but a huge blessing in disguise.

Social Nerdia: How did you get started in online video and where did all that passion for it come from?

RS: I was graduating from Lehigh with a Computer Science and Business degree and most of the software development was in C or C++. Not a very inspirational coding language and something I had a hard time connecting with. Then came a course in e-learning and was told to "build something that teaches someone something in Flash." At the time Macromedia MX had just come out and made it really easy to have flash animations interact with video. So I put my head down for a few months and built a blue's clues episode that was designed to have students lean forward and engage with content. That landed me a 6-month stint at Macromedia (worked for a summer and while at school) on the Flash Video team, which allowed me to see the video ecosystem from a nice vantage point. I still remember the scaling issues/inquiries we got from Youtube in 2006. Looking back, it was a big coincidence but I registered interactivetube.com two months before youtube.com was registered.

Social Nerdia: What advice can you give to aspiring tech entrepreneurs?

RS: Big picture advice: Time is your most valuable asset. Hustle. Fail fast. Do what you love. Tips & Tricks advice: Read Hackernews daily (the iPhone app is golden). Dribbble is the best place to find designers and/or design inspiration.

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Airtime Launches, Sean Parker Tells Me It's Coming to Android in Four Weeks

I first heard of Napster while in High School in Guatemala City. I must have been the last person on Earth to download it because everyone I knew was already raving about it by the time I heard of it. Napster was cool and Napster was for everyone. You could just sense that it was the beginning of something new, not just for the Internet but for music and society at large. Napster was like a symbol of revolution, freedom, youth and permanent change. That sort of thing.

Before MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker changed the world with Napster. They were teens themselves in 1999, and after quite eventful careers in the tech world, they are now collaborating to try to change world again - this time, with Airtime.

"What do you think about this Airtime?," asked the second person I Airtimed with just an hour or so ago. "It's not going to change the world," I told him. I followed that sentence with "At least not today."

Airtime is currently a website where you can video chat with friends and strangers that have things in common with you. Airtime requires a Facebook account and uses the Social Graph + Open Graph to connect you with people based on your "likes" and Facebook friends. 

The first person I talked to was a guy from Brooklyn. He was normal. We both had several interests, like bands and movies, in common. We also had other common "likes" such as specific advertising agencies and tech startups. That first Airtime lasted 15 minutes. Even though the video conversation had been with a complete stranger and it ended by clicking on a "Next" button, the experience did not feel like ChatRoulette. It was different.

Sure, the concept is basically ChatRoulette 2.0. Without Facebook, Airtime would simply not be possible (sorry Twitter and Google+ fans). Airtime is not only influenced by ChatRoulette though. Elements, such as being able to watch YouTube videos together, were clearly influenced by Google+ Hangouts. And Airtime is fundamentally trying to take the idea of connecting with people around interests - which apps like Highlight and Glancee have been playing with - to the next level. 

As I thought about how Airtime could be what Highlight and Glancee never were, I couldn't help but wonder about Airtime's mobile future. It's nice to be able to test Airtime with a bunch of so-called early adopters on the day that the app was launched, but does it mean I'll want to use it to talk to my wife or to meet people at SXSW 2013? 

Maybe. It has to come to mobile first though, and the Sean/Shawn team has made it clear that Airtime is "coming soon" to mobile.

I don't like it when people say "coming soon." As a marketer, I know that I've abused the "coming soon" phrase before. it's what Instagram told everyone for a year and a half, and it's what Duke Nukem Forever claimed during fifteen years of development.

Well, apparently an Android app might be coming as soon as four weeks from now. At least that's what Sean Parker himself told me on Airtime today. 

Did I mention that Airtime launched today June 5th?

Sean Parker just recently revealed Airtime to the world a few hours ago so I was a bit surprised when he popped up on my screen as the 4th person I ever "met" on Airtime. 

"It's nice to be talking with the Sean Parker on Airtime's launch day," I said. He was wearing a blue hoodie and showed his face a bit more once he realized I had recognized him. Sean asked me where I was from and went on to share about how he had been waiting all day to be able to just hang out with some of the first people playing with Airtime. He gave me a bunch of achievement points, which is something that you can do on Airtime, and I asked what the point of such points was. He told me that they were going to become a more important part of the experience but that right now they were just there to help us interact with others, a feedback loop of sorts.

We talked about what his day had been like with the media and then I asked him about Android. He confirmed that they were indeed working on both an iOS app and an Android app. And that the latter might be coming out as soon as four weeks from now. 

Good to know. I really hope he makes it happen quickly.

This could be the beginning of something that a mainstream audience would be interested in: A desktop + mobile app that's deeply integrated with Facebook where you can communicate and share content with your friends or meet the kind of strangers you'd like to meet in real life.

With new functionality like group chats, filtered search (so you can look for people that are similar to you in specific ways), live streaming, recording capabilities, then Airtime might just be the next Instagram. Or the next Socialcam. At the very least, it could be one of those Facebook acquisitions were the amount is never disclosed.

Airtime might not change the world today, especially not without a mobile app, but it was definitely created by people who know a thing or two about the topic. I have a hunch that Sean and Shawn have a plan for how Airtime could spread the way Napster did. Hopefully I'll catch Sean Parker again so I can ask him about filtered search. On Android, of course.

Disruptor Beam's Jon Radoff talks about Game of Thrones Ascent

Jon Radoff is an entrepreneur focused on the intersection of the Internet, entertainment and social communities. Jon's latest startup Disruptor Beam is a social game company that aims to disrupt the current social game landscape. Disruptor Beam's first major development is Game of Thrones Ascent, the upcoming Facebook game based on the popular HBO TV series. In this interview, Jon shares about social games, his book Game On, gamification and the future of videogames.

"Consistent engagement is the most important element of any Internet business."

Social Nerdia: You've referred to Game of Thrones Ascent as an "anti-social" game. You've also referred to Disruptor Beam as an aspiring "Bioware of social games." What does that mean for gamers and for the company?

Jon Radoff: There's an opportunity to do more than use social networks as a social marketing platform for games; they offer a unique framework for social interaction.  We want to bring elements of story and moral decision-making into social games in a way that hasn't been done before.  

Social Nerdia: There are a few other Facebook games based on TV shows. What have you learned from the experiences they've created?

JR: In general, other games tend to be advergames; they're experiences that exist to promote the shows.  By and large, most TV shows aren't a good setting for a long-running game experience.  Game of Thrones is different.  It's a passionate fan base that wants to be transported into the world of Westeros, and we're building both the game and our business around the idea of long-term fan engagement.

Social Nerdia: Today, Facebook is the core platform for social games. Do any other options show promise at this point?

JR: Facebook is still the large platform for hooking into any type of social graph, but we see plenty of other opportunities on the horizon. We're not ready to start talking about our plans beyond Facebook yet, but I do think there are some compelling opportunities. 

Social Nerdia: You've been a videogame entrepreneur for two decades. How has that helped you shape your latest company?

JR: I've been a gaming entrepreneur, but also a social media entrepreneur and a Web software entrepreneur. The most consistent theme across everything I've done is the Internet.  What I've learned is that consistent engagement is the most important element of any Internet business (as I believe it is for any media business), and that means that you've got to be a daily part of someone's life to be the type of business that scales.

Social Nerdia: Let's talk about brands. When should brands consider building a social game as opposed to simply sponsoring or advertising in one?

JR: That's a big topic, and one that I tried to answer in the several hundred pages of Game On; but one of the most important things to think about is authenticity.  It's never enough to just splash a brand on something.  A game experience has the power to convey the essence of what a brand is about - so it's extremely important that the game experience extend what customers believe to be most important about a brand, not simply act as a new type of billboard. 

Social Nerdia: Tell me more about your book Game On. Why did you write it and how would you describe the journey from idea to bookshelves?

JR: There's a lot of power in games, but I felt that people were confused by this recent concept of "gamification."  Too many people think of gamification entirely in terms of reward systems: badges, leaderboards, etc.  What I try to convey in Game On is the idea that reward systems aren't enough.  It's about the total experience.

Social Nerdia: We're seeing more and more gamified applications and web experiences. What is the key to gamifying something online?

JR: Experiences need to be fun. Making something fun turns out to be extremely hard. But if you forget about it and focus on rewards alone, you'll end up with a hollow experience that might be superficially addictive at best, and repulsive at worst.

Social Nerdia: What early stage hardware technologies do you get excited about when it comes to the future of videogames?

JR: I think new interfaces always change game technologies; look at what tablets have done for games in general. The convergence of TV and tablets.  Now, there's at least two types of convergence: the technical convergence, which is the hype surrounding things like the so-called "second screen" applications, or the simple fact that I can watch HBO Go on my tablet. But there's also the behavioral convergence, which is that tablets are now part of the digital living room, and that the digital living room is becoming something you can take along with you; we're all acting in a different way due to what the technology has enabled. All of this bodes a great deal of change for games.

 

Social Nerdia: What advice would you give to aspiring social game developers?

JR: Do something different. Zynga-style clickers have run their course (except for maybe Zynga itself, which can do these better than anyone). The next wave of innovation is going to come from great new ideas that use the social graph in novel ways.

10 things Post-IPO Facebook can do to get liked by more advertisers

People are on Facebook because their friends are there. The Social Graph, Facebook's fancy name for all the connections on Facebook, grows every time we accept a Friend invite or subscribe to someone's status updates. The Open Graph, which goes beyond Facebook itself and into the rest of the world wide web, expands every time we "Like" an article or log in to a site using Facebook.

Facebook's nearly 1 billion monthly active users have made the site the standard for social and this is why marketers turn to Facebook when it comes to doing "social." There is simply no other platform that allows marketers to do what they can do on Facebook and the company has been able to help companies strike an impressive balance between owned, earned and paid media.

“People influence people... A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising." - Mark Zuckerberg, 2007

However, some large brands and SMBs with a presence on Facebook are not yet sold on the platform's value, particularly when they have to pay for advertising. As Facebook ad rates rise and companies like GM go public with their skepticism, Facebook has to deliver more value to marketers than ever before and it needs to do so without alienating its users.

Here are 10 things Facebook can do to become more attractive for marketers and advertisers:

1) Enhanced targeting
 

Facebook is a fantastic option to target ads based on demographics and interests. Almost 1 billion people have told Facebook where they went to school, where they work, where they live, who they like, who they're related to, how old they are and what kind of stuff you're into. But many people still complain that they are not seeing relevant ads. So what about contextual targeting? What about retargeting? Whether it's keyword targeting or defining what the future of "social search" can be, Facebook needs to be the best way to target not only the right people, but the right people at the right time. Facebook will need to continually push for more relevance in ads while ensuring ads do not become intrusive and privacy concerns do not get out of hand. 

2) Better measurement
 

Marketers might not like data but they most definitely need it. Experimentation in social media is no longer what it used to be as marketers increasingly have to show the value of each dollar they spend. This often leads to depending on superficial metrics and third parties. Facebook improved its Page Insights product in February and Facebook can now be optimized to drive specific actions, but it can always do more to provide better data (and maybe even some actual insights). Marketers that will be more willing to spend money if they have better ways to understand what that money is actually doing for them, whether the goal is affinity, advocacy, earned media value, engagement, traffic or something else.

3) Increased reach
 

Advertisers are attracted by the idea of being able to reach almost half of all Internet users on Facebook. However, there are three things that keep marketers from greater reach. For starters, users are spending more time on Facebook's mobile site and mobile apps, and they are not seeing ads on-the-go. This will soon change and Facebook will need to get it right because marketers will expect their ads to work for them across devices.

In addition to mobile ads, what about ad units in other areas of Facebook (like within videos and the new App Center)? And what about ads all over the web? Will Open Graph finally get a marketing driver beyond plug-ins and like buttons? An AdSense-like product might just be the big surprise Facebook has stored for us now that it is public, but we can only speculate at this point.

Finally, Facebook's EdgeRank keeps 84% of page fans from seeing posts. EdgeRank can allegedly be improved by doing things like using photos, finding optimal times to post, and being consistent, but 4 out of 5 fans might still not ever get a reminder that your page exists. Reach Generator can be used to increase fan reach from 16% to 70%. As some brands like GM and small businesses with low budgets focus on the "owned" part, Facebook may need to think of more flexible ways to drive fan reach.

4) Local
 

SoLoMo has become a buzzword in Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue, but the promise could become a reality if Facebook delivered mobile ads that where relevant not only based on who you are and what you like, but where you are and what you might be looking for. Target might know you're pregnant but what if it were able to give you an offer or simply a thank you for being a Target fan visiting a Target store? 

 

5) More friend-to-friend marketing opportunities
 

Sponsored Stories are great because they are the perfect blend of word of mouth and advertising. "Your friend likes a brand? Well, maybe so should you!" This kind of ad unit has never been possible before but competitors like Twitter and Google+ could follow suit. Facebook needs to not only stress the benefits of this kind of advertising, but evolve it to become a kind of word of mouth users want and expect.

6) Increased sharing and discovery

Facebook's mobile app doesn't allow us to share posts. Facebook sponsored posts cannot be shared either. Even though the Open Graph has made sharing from any web site incredibly easy to do, it's not always easy to share content from within Facebook itself. Some would disagree, but I find it easier to share content on Twitter and Google+ than on Facebook. A quick look at the "ripples" on popular Google+ posts helps prove my point. And what about discovery? What about a place on Facebook that displays content, including branded content, that is relevant and/or trending? I know I know, Facebook does not want to be seen as a media company, but curating the way LinkedIn, Google+ and most recently Twitter have been doing, could prove to also be a new way to generate traction for brands.

7) Ad optimization tools

There are many ad optimization vendors that will automate the process of delivering the right type of creative to the right kind of people at the right time to maximize success. However, many advertisers don't even know this is possible. Some ad vendors are avoiding Facebook Marketplace altogether, resorting to shady affiliate links and all kinds of strange tactics to drive LIKES for Facebook pages. Facebook might not benefit from higher revenues because optimization usually means lower costs, but what if Facebook applied its razor focus to this? What if Facebook ads were the most efficient ads on the web? And what if anyone who advertised on Facebook could get the benefits that only the savviest marketers obtain today? Some advertisers already have access to the Ads API to optimize ads with specific goals like increasing "People Talking About This," app installs, and past post shares. Let's hope this trend continues.

8) F-Commerce

 

1-800-Flowers.com set up shop on Facebook back in 2009 but you can no longer find that Facebook storefront on their Facebook page. Gamestop, Gap, Nordstrom and many others have also closed their Facebook stores. Others like Pampers continue to sell directly from within Facebook, but as marketers decide between setting up storefronts, creating the illusion of a storefront or simply linking to their websites, Facebook needs to re-define what "F-Commerce" really means. Is it social commerce enabled on websites via Open Graph? Is it personalized shopping options? Is it News Feed offers? Is it Karma-enabled social gifting? Or something else?

9) Premium ads that actually look premium
 

This one is controversial because Facebook might not have gotten to where it is today if it had cluttered the experience with big and shiny ads. Facebook has experimented with ads like homepage takeovers and Log-out ads, there's still opportunity to create "paid" experiences on Facebook that advertisers are willing to pay a larger premium on. Facebook is not only competing with other companies, it's actually competing with itself because some of the most memorable "campaigns" were powered by Facebook but had nothing to do with social ads (ie. Intel's Museum of Me, Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice and Ikea Showroom). How can ads and sponsored content stay true to the nature of Facebook while also allowing advertisers to get much more creative with their executions? 

10) Mobile from the ground up
 

Facebook likes to say that marketers need to think about "social from the ground up." And they're right.

In the same way, Facebook needs to think about mobile from the ground up. While Facebook's mobile experience has gone through an amazing journey from subpar to being one one of the most visited mobiles sites of all time, it has a long way to go. Facebook is already learning from Instagram, but Facebook needs to give even more attention to marketers' needs. Mobile ads are one thing, but the entire mobile experience is important to marketers. Facebook pages on mobile devices have not changed much since they first came out. They have not yet adopted the Timeline look & feel, and they don't display tabs or applications. This means that brands have to go through extra effort to be able to deliver content and experiences on mobile devices. As spending in creative and technical expertise increases, spending in other areas like social ads decreases.

Conclusion

In the end, marketers want measurable and actionable results. According to a study by Webtrends, people only click on about 1 of every 2000 ads they see on Facebook. If the average CTR for digital ads is about 0.1 percent, then Facebook's 0.051% is concerning, especially when considering Google's 0.4%. Facebook was quite strategic with the risks it presented in its S-1 filing. Click-through rates were not mentioned as a risk even though it was mentioned that ads will have to "generate a competitive return relative to other alternatives." 

Savvy social media marketers would say that CTRs are not the goal. Activity, engagement, and long-term connections (and even relationships) are what Facebook is for. Some might say "You're doing it wrong," "Use CPC dummy," "Work with the right agency," and "Measure engagement," but the bottom line is that higher CTRs would demonstrate that Facebook's ads are as relevant as promised. 

Relevance is what marketers want and relevance is not exactly easy to measure. It's also not easy to achieve without leveraging data and Facebook can't afford another "Beacon" so it's pursuits when it comes to working with brands needs to be extremely calculated. As a marketer who focuses on social media, I constantly remind myself that consumers don't want to be annoyed or bothered; they just want relevant content.

An abilitiy to consistently deliver such relevant content in an innovative and flexible manner will get advertisers not only interested, but also happy and eager for more. Post-IPO, Facebook needs to see itself as a partner that can help brands get there, wherever "there" is. 

Dachis Group's Peter Kim Talks Social Business by Design

Peter Kim is the Chief Strategy Officer at Dachis Group, a leading social business advisory firm founded by Jeff Dachis. Peter was DG's first employee in 2008 and he has since then built the firm's consulting practice from the ground up. An avid blogger and widely respected industry thought leader, Peter recently co-authored the book Social Business by Design. I've personally worked with Peter's team and have admired his work and writings for many years. In this interview, Peter shares thoughts and insights about visual thinking, visual social media and the rise of social business.

"Brands must find ways to build scalable solutions to rebuild trust, before competitors steal those relationships."

Social Nerdia: What is Social Business by Design about and why did you write it?

Peter Kim: Social Business by Design is a guide to understanding the fundamentals of social business. Dion Hinchcliffe and I have decades of strategy and implementation experience between us, combined with the aggregate hundreds of years of experience of our Dachis Group colleagues. We wrote the book because we've seen the maturation of external social media and internal collaboration technologies, proven by solid business results. The book centers on ten fundamental principles of social business and we feel that beginners and experts alike can benefit from its wide range of content.

Social Nerdia: Dachis Group has focused on social business solutions since its inception. Do you see yourselves as a consultancy, agency or a hybrid, and what does this mean to your clients?

PK: Dachis Group is on track with the path originally charted four years ago: we are advisers to the world's leading brands (including Samsung) and our advisory has traditionally taken the form of services and more recently big data analytics products. Our clients benefit from expertise across the full social business spectrum: research, strategy, planning, build, implementation, operations, and measurement.

Social Nerdia: DG's XPLANE team contributed graphics to Social Business by Design. Why is visual thinking important?

PK: The company formerly known as XPLANE has been integrated into global operations as expert facilitators and visual thinkers. Using visual thinking as an integral part of our discovery and delivery allows for rapid communication and greater clarity for project teams. So when we were writing the book, Dion and I knew that including a comprehensive set of figures to complement the text would be critically important to getting our message across.

Social Nerdia: Do you think the trend towards visual social media, demonstrated by the popularity of Pinterest and Instagram, reveals hints of a shift in consumer behavior?

PK: It's great that visuals are getting lots of attention and I think that indicates better use of technology rather than fundamental shifts in mentality. Rewind back to the 1990's when we used Lynx for text-based web browsing. Mosaic revolutionized online experiences by providing image support, but there was one small issue: people needed to create them. Now fast forward back to where we are today - mobile phones feature professional-grade digital cameras, high-speed bandwidth is readily available, and services have launched specifically to harness trends in consumer behavior, namely public sharing. The social business lesson: the world has changed; make sure your mental model has shifted so your brand experiences will survive and thrive.

Social Nerdia: It seems like consumers continue to lose trust for large organizations despite brands' attempts to build trust. How can being and doing "social" change that?

PK: We're caught in a shift from traditional one-way communication to two-way engagement. The old model served companies well for decades; with the rise of the industrial revolution and mass production, companies needed ways to publicize and move large amounts of product. But don't forget that there was an earlier model in place for an earlier time: two-way engagement. Commerce happened on a very localized basis and marketing was person-to-person, word-of-mouth, and highly based on trust. But back in the 1700s, scale wasn't critical. In the 21st century, brands are facing a return to two-way engagement brought on by new technology and cultural trends. That's why understanding social business is so important - brands must find ways to build scalable solutions to rebuild trust, before competitors steal those relationships.

Social Nerdia: What does the embodyment of social business look like at companies that have traditionally been slow to embrace technology?

PK: Social business adoption follows a set of now recognizable patterns. Individuals become aware of opportunities for brands via media and personal experience. Executives are hearing about the trends from their peers and at conferences. Small pilots are started for internal collaboration and external communication, experimenting with emerging technologies and platforms. That's where momentum at most companies comes to a screeching halt: as managers learn about social business, its potential, and see early proof points for themselves, they reach a point where fundamental process and culture changes are required to proceed further.  Pace of tech adoption becomes a moot point.

Social Nerdia: What is the Social Business Index?

PK: The Social Business Index is a lens into Dachis Group's big data platform, providing multiple views into companies' social business performance and trends. We monitor over 30,000 brands and 100 million accounts to create what we call the "social business graph." We pull data from 230+ countries across social platforms including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, Renren, Twitpic, Foursquare, MySpace, as well as blogs, wikis, forums, BBS, message boards, websites, and thousands of other sources.

Social Nerdia: What advice can you give to social media professionals that want to encourage their company's adoption of social business?

PK: Make sure you understand the fundamentals, which allow you to build a solid business case. Learn about different strategies for adoption, whether B2B or B2C, regulated or not, Fortune 500 or SMB. Then start building. Social Business By Design is a guide for helping professionals succeed in that process.