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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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.