What is it?

From a technology standpoint, the Facebook “Like” button is part of a larger technology initiative called the Open Graph Protocol or Open Graph API.  The platform is an upgrade to last year’s Open Graph announcements. It also replaces the “Fan” button with the “Like” button.

The new protocols will not only allow organizations to have all the features currently found on their Facebook pages page such as being able to “Fan” or now “Like” the organization, allowing that action to show up on people’s profiles, publish that action across their friend’s newsfeeds, but will allow Facebook to start building massive amounts of data on how Facebook users interact with sites within and beyond the Facebook walls.

Simply put the “Like” button and Open Graph Protocol will allow Facebook and organizations to understand web users’ habits across the larger web. They want to build not only a social, but personalized web whose hub is Facebook.

Organizations will be able to find out what users like, what they do not like, what their friends and connections like and then tailor a user’s site experience to that data. They can leverage this platform to make their websites more personalized based on site visitor’s Facebook profiles and actions within Facebook and outside the walls of the social network by utilizing data from sites that also adopt the Open Graph Protocol.

One of the earliest integrations of the new protocols is Levi’s ecommerce site http://store.levi.com/. You can now see the products that Facebook users like and what your friends’ like. Based on your interactions on the site, Levi’s can also provide targeted and personalized recommendations for different products.

Why it matters:

1. Facebook is the most used social network by monthly active users. With just under half a billion users, Facebook boasts the largest active user base of any US-based social network. Need some perspective on that number? If Facebook was a country, it would be the third-largest behind only India and China. Needless to say, it has the largest potential reach of any social network for your brand to connect with consumers.
2. Facebook could be the key to building the true semantic web. Due to the number of users and the ability for Facebook to collect data from its and any site that implements the Open Graph protocols, Facebook is potentially becoming the hub of the semantic web. By semantic web, we are referring to the idea of building a web ecosystem where a user’s needs can be anticipated, understood and personalized for them. Think of demographic or geographic targeting on other sites such as Google, but take it to the next level, where a website understands what you and your network likes, does not like, buys, reads etc, and then personalizes your experience around that data.
3. The growth and data provided by the Open Graph is already massive. The new Open Graph Protocols were announced less than a week ago and already some 50,000 sites have implemented it and Facebook is seeing over 1 billion “Likes” per day.

Privacy Concerns:

The greatest concern is privacy. Facebook has not effectively promoted exactly what these changes mean for users, at least not in terms that the average Facebook user understands. The Open Graph Protocol allows third-parties to access most, if not all, of any Facebook user’s data as long as they are opted into the program through their security settings. It’s important to note that all users were automatically opted into the Open Graph Protocol.

How your organization can use it:

1. Site registration using Facebook. Similar to how Facebook Connect allowed websites to register and sign-on utilizing their Facebook account, sites can even more easily integrate Facebook’s authentication features to allow users to register for your site. Websites can access a Facebook users real name, email address, profile picture and list of friends. This sign up functionality can either replace or supplement your current system and can help increase user signups and improve the quality of user data.
2. Interaction and Engagement. With new features such as the “Like” button and additional sharing features, websites can now engage with visitors in deep ways such as what the larger Facebook community likes on your site or what friends of specific users like. This will help create engaging and meaningful experiences for Facebook users.
3. Syndication beyond the walls of Facebook. Websites that incorporate the “Like” features across different pieces of content—such as articles, images, products, etc.—will allow site visitors to easily spread that content across Facebook and web.

All of these opportunities can ultimately help increase the viral potential of your content. To further illustrate the process, click on the image below which will bring up a larger image to illustrate the “like” process.

- Michael

1. Fill out your personal profile. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities. The easier you are to find the more connections you can make and the more chance you have of finding that key contact.
2. Link to your personal profile. Include a link to your profile as part of an email signature; the benefit is that the link enables people to see all your credentials.
3. Let your profile help with SEO. LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. To do this, create a public profile and select “Full View”. Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name.
4. Join industry groups. Search for and join industry-related LinkedIn groups , even if there is no activity within them. The icons for those groups will show up on your profile which tells people at a glance that you are involved in your industry and presumably knowledgeable about it. It also creates a connection between you and anyone else who is a member of that group. If the group is active, join in the conversation where appropriate. This is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.
5. Post news. Many groups allow you to post links to news articles intended to spark conversation. More often than not, conversations do not arise from these links but that doesn’t mean that no one pays attention to them. Like status updates, this function can be used to position yourself as knowledgeable in your field. But think before you go down this route. Before you post anything, ask yourself if what you’re about to share is truly valuable to the group.
6. Pose questions on “LinkedIn Answers”. If you want to make connections with a specific type of person, you can use LinkedIn’s Answer feature to try and attract them by posing a question the LinkedIn audience. Think about the type of person you want to reach and then formulate a question for which you think that person would have an opinion about that they’d like to share. LinkedIn ‘Answers’ is a great way to engage the sorts of people you want to begin a dialogue with.
7. Answer questions on “LinkedIn Answers”. Answer questions posed by others. This, again, is another aspect of LinkedIn that can be used to demonstrate your competence. Only answer the questions for which you know the answer intimately. If you are truly helpful to the person, they’ll consider assigning you as the best answer among the group. Your answer but also the fact that it was the best answer will be displayed on your profile. With this method you can both demonstrate your, and by extension your company’s, expertise but most importantly it provides you an opportunity to engage the question asker (someone clearly interested in the area you’ve just demonstrated your knowledge in) AND any and all people who read the question and your subsequent answer.LinkedIn Answers: http://www.linkedin.com/answers
   LinkedIn Groups Directory: http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory

If you have other great ideas, please share them in the comments below, or email them to us and we’ll post them here for the benefit of the community.

While we have a lot to learn, we’ve learned quite a bit from the numerous social campaigns we’ve managed for our clients. One of the major findings is that social campaigns are unique. And I mean really unique. You can’t force a customer dialog if the customer doesn’t want to have one. The campaign must be both transparent and interesting enough to make a customer want to interact with your brand. The product, however, doesn’t have to be overly interesting, because most likely there are some people out there who are already fans of this product or brand, and the job of the social campaign is to unite these people and allow them to communicate directly with the brand.

And all of this has taught us a few things about measuring social. It’s tricky for sure. Each campaign is going to have a variety of stakeholders that will all care about different things. Some will care about fans and followers. Some will care about impressions. Some will care about clicks and interaction levels. Some will just care about direct purchase and lead acquisition. So…what is a marketer to do? We’re starting to work through this conversation with clients and help define a “path” of metrics to track. We are working a funnel process, or a customer purchase cycle, to identify clear and measurable points of interaction for the consumer during this campaign. This sounds easier than it is, because each business has a different understanding of their customer, and the purchase cycle, not to mention a different business need for running a social campaign in the first place.

For example, say a client is doing a social campaign to introduce a new tech product into the marketplace. Perhaps we’re holding a live world release and product demo on Ustream, and have held an event registration in Facebook. To promote this, we’ve built a twitter following based on a sneak peak photo opportunity campaign, and an event live-tweet road show. We’ve posted these pictures in a tagged Flickr and Photobucket account. We’ve ran connect based ads that are customized to users profiles in Facebook. We’ve ran ads based on job categories in LinkedIn. We’ve initiated a good forum discussion board and have seeded tech blogs with hot information releases. New product demo’s have been sent to leading bloggers and industry journalists. The campaign kicks off and it’s time to report the initial results. Ideally we’ve worked with the client ahead of time to identify a path to report along that makes decision making easy. Perhaps we’ve created a funnel reporting to identify:

1. Customer Awareness – Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers, Ad Impressions, Blog Posts and Articles Written
2. Customer Engagement – Facebook Fan Interactions & Posts, Twitter Mentions & Retweets, Blog Comments, Article Comments and Reads, Photo Views
3. Customer Activity – Event Registrations, Demo Launch Views

The metric that we’re measuring changes as the campaign progresses, so naturally the reporting and focus should change as well.

So, bottom line, it’s a lot of work. But, when this is done correctly, we’re starting to see some unique findings. For one, clients are starting to enjoy their social campaigns. These campaigns are allowing them some artistic freedom, and a natural extension of what they do anyway. The clients are sometimes even becoming a bit more invigorated with their brand, almost as if learning more about it for the first time. And customers are responding. They are participating and asking questions. They are submitting information and scheduling events. They are event buying products and helping companies streamline R&D processes, through direct conversation and feedback.

Here’s an interesting article about how social media engagement levels are varied and should be looked at uniquely.

Click to: Download 11 Case Studies Document

This past December, I was visiting my family for Christmas and my mother asks me “how do I get on facebook?” I quickly replied back “Mom, you don’t.” Perhaps for selfish reasons. I really didn’t know what to say. Here I am, approaching 30, and have been on myspace and facebook for quite a few years. What were once safe harbors for your college party pics and funny comments between friends, has now become a hub for your entire online life, viewable by every friend and family member alike. And the baby-boomers like my parents, they want in on the action too.

The reality of this adoption didn’t hit me personally until this week when I had different friends say their parents where on facebook. I quickly replied back, “so is my mom”. Being in the online marketing business I started to think more about it. I thought about the people that have “added me” as a friend in the last 6 months:

• My Mom
• Two of my Aunts
• My great Aunt
• My second & third cousins
• My older brother
• My older sister

I think it’s safe to say Social Media is not a “fad” and is probably here to spoil the online photo posting for high school and college students everywhere for generations to come. But also, giving us an unprecedented “in” with the boomer-generation that has been historically tougher to reach online.

How about you? Has your parents added you on facebook yet? If not, beware because it will happen sooner than you might think.

Here is an interesting article I came across today by Jennifer Martinez; an industry author on Online Marketing.

http://gigaom.com/2009/08/25/the-social-web-isnt-just-for-the-young-anymore/

Here’s a good article about the Iranian Election usage of Twitter.

When you look at Twitter, keep in mind that only 10% of the users on Twitter make 90% of the “tweets”. This means that there are die hard twitter users that have a ton of followers and probably get something from their tweets because they are reaching a massive critical audience. The rest of the users, just get a little fun or find it interesting to see what other people are up to in real time.

Derek Harding, one of the writers over at Clickz [a marketing news website] poses some questions about the long term validity of Twitter and whether it will “implode under the weight of it’s hype”. Keep in mind Twitter still hasn’t found a long term revenue model. Derek Harding’s article can be seen here: http://www.clickz.com/3634038

Let me know what you think!

Ken