Video Consumption in Social Channels

For Valentine’s Day, My Coke Rewards created a series of three posts that had pass along value that fans wanted to share with their own networks. The results were phenomenal, and insights on the post series showcased opportunities for leveraging multimedia (video and photo) posts in social media.

App #Geekout Trend: Real-time People Discovery Using Facebook Interests

I love following the startup scene in technology (specifically in social [especially using Facebook's Open Graph API], mobile and healthcare in particular). Drew Hawkins and I geeked out with a presentation on some of our favorite startups to emerge from TechCrunch Disrupt last fall internally at Engauge. My all-time, hands down favorite to emerge from the bunch was Wondershake, a location-based mobile app that connects individuals with like-minded people using their Facebook interests. This startup was included in all of the “remarkable” categories; however, it didn’t place because it was not available in the U.S.

Since then, I’ve seen no comparable players that align an app user’s interests to allow for real-time discovery of individuals around them. Until now.

Marketer-Speak in 2012 for Facebook Changes in 2011

2012 kicks off the year of the verb. Hot debates stemmed following the change in Edgerank, as part of comprehensive changes from F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, in September of last year. Since then, subsequent changes affected Facebook applications, third party publishers, and Facebook analytics, to name a few. For those not as interested in keeping up with the day-to-day changes, below are three key summary strategies for adapting a Facebook page to optimize engagement with the changes and two key takeaways from the changes in 2011 moving forward.

Three key summary strategies for adapting a Facebook page to optimize engagement with 2011 Facebook changes:

1. Facebook decreases the value of a Page Like and of a Post Like.
2. For the social marketer: Comments four times more valuable in driving click-throughs than Likes.
3. Graphrank, a News Feed prioritization for Open Graph apps, comes to Facebook. 

Two key takeaways from 2011:

1. Facebook’s Champion in 2011? The developer,  the Hacker, and the Open Graph-speaking marketer.
2. Facebook applications will become the most valuable opportunity for brands to engage Facebook users.

Digital Atlanta: Nonprofit Digital Strategy Forum

I’m excited to present tomorrow at the Nonprofit Digital Strategy Forum as part of Digital Atlanta. Thank you to Jessica Kirkwood for organizing. I’m looking forward to joining Cristin Jordan and Chad Elkins of Engauge and Shannon Primm and Sarah Cronin of Alzheimer’s Association, Georgia Chapter. Linked below is my presentation.

Social Currency for Brands: Where to Start

Social currency is how we enable consumers to interact with a brand in ways that are most natural and everyday for them. It means that we’re meeting consumers in their day-to-day life and providing utility from the brand without interrupting their flow. For example, we’re not asking them to visit a brand page to (go out of their way to) seek out our material. Instead, we’d identify their natural social behavior and give them an enhanced, more streamlined way to execute that action.

Save the Stamp: Touching Campaign to Save the USPS

I love to see reinventions of traditional media using nostalgia and heartfelt emotion. It reminds me of the modern take on the traditional postcard we see with PostSecret, a personal favorite, which is an “ongoing community art project where people mail
in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.” Not only can merging traditional mediums with digital mediums align the past with the present, it’s a hot trend.  In fact, the PostSecret website is the largest advertising-free blog in the world with nearly half of a billion visitors.

Another great implementation comes from a graduate of Creative Circus, which is right down the street from Engauge. Skyler Dobin, former JWT intern and Creative Circus grad, created an ad campaign for the United States Postal Service to encourage people to write more hand-written letters.

Spotted: ClipMenu – A Clipboard Manager for Mac OS X

Those of us who are Social Engagement Managers at Engauge are immersed in our social communities on a daily basis. One critical component of this role is answering questions from fans, followers, engagers, interactors, etc. We craft a “response matrix” ahead of time that outlines questions we receive on a regular basis and assign a well-crafted sample response. While we in no way copy and paste these responses, using a document to reference keeps our voice and tone consistent and allows us to efficiently answer questions.

Spotted: Geekli.st – a social resume and accomplishment tracker

I recently happened upon Geekli.st in an article from “The Next Web.” Geekli.st is marketed as a resume platform for developers, but truly it is ideal for anyone who dabbles in a few specialized areas. It allows users to set up a social resume where individuals create “cards” of areas they have made progress. Within the cards, users can add “micros” to the big-picture accomplishments to track the individual steps achieved along the way. Users also share their activity to a central newsfeed, where they can “high five” other remarkable accomplishments or follow others on the platform.

Applications in Timeline: Critical Opportunity for Brands on Facebook

Many of the new updates released last week and as part of f8, including Timeline, News Ticker, and the new Open Graph functionality available for applications, do a fantastic job of working in conjunction to overturn pockets within Facebook that do not optimize social connectivity for users. By leveraging the new updates with technical advancements, brands have a unique opportunity to harness engagement with their most loyal constituents within their users’ base portal: the Timeline.

Meeting Users in Their Timeline

Marketers have a three-fold opportunity to provide a significantly enhanced social experience to reach their users in engagements not previously possible. The first issue that Facebook addressed is that users do not want to share their regular interaction with an online or application activity since the information is sent as a status message and is irrelevant to the majority of their network. The term “spamming friends” has become a casual saying when referring to a user’s disapproval of Facebook’s widespread sharing of personal status updates. One of the latest releases at f8, Ticker,  allows for the sharing through these apps to be shared in a secondary format than simply sharing to the News Feed.

Four Examples of Innovation in Loyalty Programs

I work on a team that is constantly socializing, modernizing and driving engagement for a well-known loyalty program. Following are some fascinating ideas and examples that may dictate the future of the loyalty program:

• Integration with Mobile
• Rewarding Influencers
• Encouraging Social Engagement
• Comprehensive App Integration