enter: new media

Facebook took a big step in the right direction today by announcing a set of new privacy settings. The features, which will be rolled out in the coming weeks, will give users greater privacy control, and it seems this will not come at the expense of existing functionality.

Translation: the new privacy settings are unlikely to jeopardize the efforts of brand marketers and managers using Facebook to promote their products.

The singular objective of the Facebook security enhancements has been to protect the consumer, not to impede the efforts of marketing users. Consequently, brand marketers shouldn’t be alarmed by the new privacy settings: expect little net change to your marketing operations.

According to All Facebook, five major security enhancements were announced:

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• F8, the big Facebok developer conference is happening this Wednesday in San Franscisco

• Expect big announcements – primarily having to do with a universal “Like” button similar to the “Share” button.

• We expect this to make it easier for brands to build valuable social media connections with Facebook users across all of their digital media initiatives.

The buzz and controversy surrounding Facebook’s forthcoming “Like vs. Fan” terminology change overshadowed another potential game-changer announced by Facebook last week – the creation of Community Pages. While this change may make it easier for brands to claim to their own “official” Facebook turf, it also opens a new set of marketing opportunities and challenges.

Facebook’s goal for the Community Pages initiative is to create greater distinction between users’ efforts to build unofficial communities relating to brands, entertainers and other public figures and the planned and targeted efforts of brand owners and managers.

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Just when more and more marketers were getting into a groove promoting their “become a fan” message, Facebook goes and announces a shift away from this terminology in favor of the existing “like” feature. While many were quick to panic at first, most are seeing this semantic shift as a way to make it easier for users to build lasting connections to brands in the future. Yet, rather than taking pressure off marketers looking to increase their impact in social media, this shift places even more emphasis on the need to be “likeable” – i.e., deliver valued content on an ongoing basis that users will like, share and recommend.

One of the keys to this new approach is its ability to sidestep the mental hurdle involved when users are asked to overtly declare they are a “fan” of a particular brand. Soon they will simply need to “like” a brand’s ad, content or activity on Facebook in order to establish an equivalent connection. With Facebook users currently using the “like” feature over “become a fan” by a ratio of nearly 2:1, the implications in brand reach on the platform could be seismic.

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Social media “platforms” are hot right now. And why not? Today, you don’t necessarily have to pay to build custom Facebook tabs and applications from scratch when you can re-skin existing apps and deploy a highly branded presence with rich social media tools in a fraction of the time and budget.

Ahh, but there is a catch: monthly licensing fees. Many who have built their Facebook presence on proprietary development platforms are now stuck paying monthly fees, simply for the right to continue to use their own Facebook presence.

We see things a different way.

We too are big believers in the value of social media platforms. In fact, we offer one of the richest set of tools and capabilities available. However, instead of asking our clients to continue to pay for these customized tools, we focus on delivering the professional social media services needed to build and manage community and drive measurable results. These services include community management, digital PR, content production, and promotional marketing.

Don’t let a good idea like social media platform lead you down a dead end street. Avoid licensing fees and put that your budget to work to create an end-to-end social media program.

Facebook is rolling out a series of changes that  may require swift action by marketers. The disappearance of the “Boxes” tab, narrowing of custom tabs and discontinuation of iFrame use – all likely by the end of February – leave little time for the modifications that will shape how the social media-using public perceives your brand. Unless you’re sticking to out-of-the-box functionality (which means you’re leaving ROI on the table), you have a little over a month to prepare. Read the rest of this entry »

Celebrities, spokespersons and other prominent personalities are flocking to Facebook. It enables them to expand their reach beyond a particular media or social venue and connect with existing and new audiences through a channel known both for reach and flexibility … yet many take advantage of neither. Instead, they use default Facebook functionality, which offers little advantage over the average user, let alone other recognized names. So, when enter:new media began to work with international polo star Nacho Figueras on his Facebook presence, we emphasized that there were no boundaries. Forget the confining structures seen by the average Facebook user, we explained, and there is no limit to the fan experience that can be delivered. Read the rest of this entry »

The luxury market resisted online marketing for years, fearing brand degradation and that additional investment wouldn’t yield a return. Yet, this thinking is changing, quickly. The ubiquity of internet and social media use includes the high net worth market. Skipping the social media space thus means passing on a rare opportunity to engage the core market directly.

Versace decided to get in front of this trend. Rather than enter social media with trepidation, a common approach in the luxury apparel market, this premier apparel and accessories brand worked with enter:new media  to launch an integrated online-to-boutique concierge service to engage its customers through the holiday season, cultivate brand loyalty and infuse a personal touch into the online retailing environment. Read the rest of this entry »

To promote a brand through social media, sometimes, you have to focus on everything else. When we developed a social media marketing effort for YMI Jeans, it became clear that the target market was looking for more than the new styles and products that our client wanted to sell. To reach its goal, we created an integrated social media environment that used related information to attract likely customers and used it to draw them into a relationship with YMI.

We partnered with YMI Jeans to construct a customized social media presence that includes robust content development and community management for its blog, Twitter and Facebook … as a starting point. Of course, content has little value in front of a limited audience. To increase the value of YMI’s promotional material, we launched a collaborative initiative with musician Pete Wentz and his clothing line, Clandestine, to increase brand visibility, drive sales and attract social media users into an ongoing relationship to use as a foundation for future revenue generation.

For YMI Obsessed, our client’s blog, we conducted an interview with Wentz, using the content to drive membership on YMI’s fan page and to generate activity on Twitter. Proactive media outreach expanded the interview’s online footprint, as several high-profile, highly trafficked blogs picked up the story and made the interview YMI’s most popular blog post. After the initial spike, we found an increase in the traffic baseline, indicating that core readership increased substantially.

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Remember the old days (2008) when so many brands were trying to decide whether or not to engage in social media?  Today, the hot question on the minds of brand managers is “Now that we are here, how do we measure and increase brand value from these investments?”

According to the latest report from eMarketer.com, most have a long way to go.

Despite widespread adoption of social media, measurement still lags. Only 16% of those polled said they currently measured ROI for their social media programs. More than four in 10 respondents did not even know whether the social tools they were using had ROI measurement capabilities.

Measuring the success of social media marketing can be difficult, but using a variety of hard and soft ROI metrics is one solution. For example, distributing a coupon via a social network and monitoring its redemption can put a concrete number on social success. And marketers can also assign a dollar value to soft metrics, such as number of fans or followers, to measure ROI.

Unlike many agencies that lead with a creative tool or campaign, we lead with a focus on defining metrics. Creating value in social media is less about one big idea and more about pointing a thousand little ideas in the direction of unified metrics. This is impossible to do without a clear vision of how to define that value upfront.

How clear are you on how social media can and should be used to drive measurable value for your brand?