The chief issue with a like, a retweet, or any other broadcast that is asked of a user is the endorsement behind it. Just as social has a code of conduct for brands engaging with consumers, the same exists for consumers engaging with each other. Posting to the wall and using a strong statement, each “like” is a statement. And not only do you have to get past that hurtle, but under the current feed systems, each action disappears off in minutes to a sea of new updates, photos and other likes leaving little long term connection outside of a smart counter.

But with Facebook’s new timeline feature and the apps that plug into it, the sharing game is in for a massive change.

As Facebook demonstrated with their launch partners at the recent f8 developer conference, a timeline app is an aggregation of activities from a particular site or tool that are individually less visible but collectively add up to reflect a part of someone’s life in their profile — whether it’s sharing a live playlist with spotify, last nights’ movie with Netflix, the current craft project, or even an automated stream from a vacation, apps will allow for users to associate activities as a part of their self identification.

Less visible & less significant, the opportunity for exposure will increase

The challenges to liking that I mentioned previously poses a significant barrier on many levels — users are selective about how many companies they like in total, how frequently they will add something new and even how they interact with sub-level pages like a brand vs an individual item for fear of overdoing it or being spammed by brands. By lowering the priority of each post and enabling more reasonable actions (reading, watching, listening to, researching, etc) it’s logical that users will become more willing to share and even allow for automated posting for trusted and appropriate tools.

In traditional advertising we consider repeated exposure vital to building up awareness and consideration so while these changes reduce the impact of any individual share action that is moved over to a timeline app, repetition is a worthy tradeoff for building social credibility.

Social has gone far beyond speeding up support inquiries or driving discussion n product launches, brand building is now really more “brand attachment” or the connection a brand is able to make, keep and show within a customer’s life. Timeline draws this evolution out literally and even further drives home the significance of moving from a buyer-supplier relationship to a partnership of sorts.

Early adopters will benefit significantly from viral effects.

While f8 outlined a few possibilities, there’s really no consumer facing brand that can’t find a way to bring themselves into a timeline.

The opportunity for timeline apps to is significant across many b2c and even b2b channels going from the very straight forward and “obvious” activities like a streaming service post to far more complex sharing like an update after a QR code scan or the departure of a plane.

Pulling in my own real world example, we see timeline as a game changing way to launch and build activity bringing gift related actions out from our standalone web and mobile platform and into a user’s existing social base without having to force (or build) a full app connection. With a simple confirmation, the wishlist picks, reviews and discussions around products created on our site live in a central place right where our user is most — Facebook. This in turn drives up repeated impressions which not only gives us the chance at growing our users but it helps the user fulfill their goal of getting their wishlist shared, seen and that gift purchased – it’s an action that we both want.

From my seat as both managing a consumer service and bringing brand marketing programs out, timeline apps are one of those changes that we will look back on and say “wow, that changed things” but I am eager to know what you think — is your team mapping out ideas, knee deep in code or holding on the sidelines to see if things shake out first?

Are the social tools we are using the right tools for our businesses?

Let’s start with a couple examples…

It’s Sunday afternoon and a man walks into Robins Brothers, “the world’s largest engagement ring store”. After having a great experience with the clerk and making a selection, he’s prompted to share the store by a kiosk on the door. Elated about the experience he quickly “validates” the store by liking it through Facebook. Before he makes the 5 minute drive home his soon-to-be fiancé’s friends have all posted back congratulating the two on an engagement that hasn’t happened. Whoops.

Fast forward a few days… the same man heads out with his [now] fiancé to watch a movie at the local theatre. The film is considered a “chick flick” but he likes it. After the movie, fandango asks him to post a review through his choice of social sites… all of which use his real name. Concerned from his last incident that he’ll get caught by his buddies he says nothing. Opportunity lost.

The next day the woman’s wife who works for a large corporation that was presented in the movie in a less than great way gets a call from her bosses’ boss asking about a comment she made about the brand integration on her new Twitter account.  Realizing that what she had said was public, she turns off the feed from the site where she posted to Twitter.

None of these are far fetched, in fact, they’re all based on real stories that have happened and you can bet there are millions more out there. From a casual comment on a “like” of a particular brand to noting a review on a product a friend would not have expected you to buy, people are increasingly aware of the association between their lives and their postings.

While there’s inherent benefits in forcing real identity around social content like accessing someone’s friend network, or even seeming necessity, like detailed commentary, that’s a pro we’ve created without necessarily considering the impact of the con.

Thus it comes down to a decision: more content or better validation.

Luckily most brands don’t have to pick one or the other. With a host of tools it’s possible to allow both sides and with tweaking, even seemingly open tools can be made rather private. For example, Facebook’s basic like button posts right to the wall while the much richer UI share widget allows the user to select to exclude or include friends. Simple messaging to explain this may encourage a user afraid of exposure to hit share.

Give people enough choice to decide what and how while matching their own need for privacy, all while encouraging them to influence others – which accomplish your goal of creating visibility and buzz, even if it’s not quite in the way you wanted.

I’ve been there before myself, several times. Between acquisitions, periods of rapid growth, outsourcing of departments and a myriad of other challenges, we saw social support as the way to quickly address a bad stigma about the brand’s service, long queue times and public critique over support. But while social support provided an apparent short term fix, the truth was we were making a long term mistake and conditioning our customers to turn to the wrong venue, a very public venue, to solve something which they asked us to, and we should have been able to, solve elsewhere.

When social support is “better”, that obviously means everything else is worse

Connected as consumers are, not everyone starts with twitter or Facebook and just as you don’t want to force a customer to pick email over the phone or the phone over an in store rep, forcing a customer to use a social channel, whether it’s directed or just the only place they find an answer in a timely manner, starts the whole conversation off on a negative foot.

At the same time you can bet that by the time they show up on your social support channel, they’ve already ranted about you… They’re coming in hot and the solution is no longer to give them a great experience, it’s to make up for a bad one.

Tainted, an engagement channel becomes a support stop

Every reply is an @ that shows up when someone loads your twitter account. Every Facebook, Blog or Foursquare comment remains front and center for the world to see hundreds, thousands of times in a single day. When you have a branded channel taking a barrage of help questions, when team leads or executives are becoming primary contact points, you’ve got a major miss that dilutes your ability to use social to engage, promote and build with your customers.

Customer service is marketing these days and a failure to any one offering leads to rants, complaints and a very public problem that is easily avoided by taking the same investment approach you’ve put into social support and spreading the ‘love’ around.

An offline customer is just as potent as an online

Often social support programs deliver higher service and better “gives” as company perceive that the visibility warrants a serious fix. While customers sure appreciate the extra gives, it’s a mistake to think that the most potent voice is the one coming to twitter. After all, what story is really going to get passed around… The airport customer bounced around by the front desk and phone support while stranded at the airport or the guy tweeting. Anyone has the potential to take a negative viral and everyone shares bad experiences. Channel is not the qualifier.

Adding to this, customers are increasingly connected so if you let a policy, or five, slip on Facebook posts, you can bet people will circumvent other channels and go right to you there… Good for your stats, bad for the business (or a potential flag that those policies need to evolve quick). Don’t be gamed.

Build great support with a social option

That’s not to say you shouldn’t use social for support — social can be a great support system but it has to be a preference channel and a part of a larger, working system where the customer can have a good experience via phone, email or in store as well. and it has to be done right as an opportunity for those who chose to use it.

Ideas like individual support reps help avoid flooding your channels with support mentions; peer to peer communities allow for scale while bringing credibility to concerns over product or quality; multi channel support crm makes a continuous, and highly personal experience but most of all, the customer expects the same great response in any other channel.

Expertise in what the brand really stands for: employees know best

While corporate builds the brand strategy and sets a marketing tone, the truth is that all the store visits and surveys in the world don’t put us in the driver seat with the customer. Retail associates, shipping teams, customer support are already the face of your brand to your customers and the true experts on the pulse of the business. From a practical, when it comes to reaching people in a meaningful way, perspective your employees are your best assets as they live and breathe the true brand every day.

Expertise in how to use social: It’s a usage curve, not a training one.

One can say that only so-called experts should be putting messages out the public but let’s face it, social is new… evolving every day and is used by just about everyone so the learning curve to participating on a useful level is unlike any tactic before. Sure you have to figure out CoTweet, Buddy Media or a similar tool, learn the goals of a social campaign and the reason for authenticity but really it comes down to thinking like a customer, being willing to look at the brand from a new vantage point and not just as a marketer: then you can make an impact.

Guidance required: Setting the right tone

This does not mean giving free reign, doing that invites arguing, insider information, and a host of other problems but with logical guidance, rather than walls, programs like Twelpforce from BestBuy have shown, leveraging the mass employee base scales far better than any corporate managed program can.

Not just employees who contribute officially: Involvement is every mention

But of course not every employee is going to be out there advocating the brand on social channels in an attempt to become the next social media manager. Even then, there are three reasons why you should continue to let everyone log on, access farmville and tweet about their weekend plans.

First you have the opportunity of each person’s network — networking in the 21st century is as much about Facebook posts and +1s as it is sales events or conferences and every employee comes to you with a unique group to influence on many levels.  You see this when employees, far outside of marketing, talk about their great corporate culture, the latest products or even defend their brand. Within their influence circle, each employee becomes the voice of their brand. Take away access and you silence their ability, and desire to support.

Second you have information. Whether it’s an earthquake or a business trend, social is the fastest tool out there. It’s why we can stun our executive teams with the speed in which we discover relevant case studies or consumer insights and the same is true across the organization. With training rather than filtering, employees can tap in to this to understand what the brand is doing, their contacts at agencies, partner providers, even local competitors.

And there’s a danger to limits: Your own social backlash

Then there’s practical side. Block Facebook and Twitter online and people will turn to their phones. Block their phones and they miss out on what’s happening in their personal life. That breeds resentment which at best hurts your retention time (hi HR) and at worst leads to a lot of bad commentary on glass door and all over the social we as people get home and log back on. People are social beings so just as you don’t stop employees from a quick chat at the water cooler or a smoking break, you shouldn’t be slapping their hands to keep them off of social.

Open up and educate to benefit.

Whether it’s leveraging motivated employees to provide a face to the brand, influencing friend circles or simply giving employees enough respect to check in now and then, there’s great opportunity in opening up social to your entire organization and focusing on educating and training rather than limiting and penalizing.

If productivity stinks, Facebook is merely today’s outlet for free time, and a ban will not fix the problem anymore than removing the free water cooler.

You can’t claim engagement if you’re buying it

Whether it’s a flier in a newspaper with a Facebook coupon, a tv spot with a Twitter url for a contest or an outright offer to buy fandom with a deep discount (see “Did This National Restaurant Chain Put Too Much Love Into the Like?” by Jay Baer) the result a purchase of a like rather than a connection with a customer. As this sort of buying becomes more common place, it’s not surprising that even as brands talk about wonderful ideas like engaging and building community, research from the Get Satisfaction blog shows that 43.5% of consumers are following brands for offers — and why not, that’s what they’re being told they’ll get.

Already missing the mark on relevancy, social sites penalize poor relevancy

With hundreds of connections per user noise has become so high that systems like Facebook’s EdgeRank now exist to tune down what a user, their friends, and even the overall “like” audience see from a brand page. Even on systems like Twitter that don’t have scoring of responses, the mere amount of information makes the less than relevant disappear into the bottom of a long stream. Thus the more a brand buys it’s following, the less each follower sees, or cares to pay attention to the brand. This becomes a cold reality when you discover that some brands are suppressed to over 80% of their audience.

This doesn’t mean abandoning growth goals, but rather settingt expectations about what they lead too

A brand that decides “I’m going to go out and advertise my page to build up” is wrong to use the word engage to refer to that program. Conversation is gone and while the activity is on a social channel, it is as much broadcast marketing as an email list or a weekly mailer… Even worse with virtually no segmentation offered by social networks, the existing loyal fan base is lumped in with the prospecting effort. Everyone becomes one jumbled mess.

On the other hand, a brand that says let’s insert a flier with orders to share a comment, or posts a sign inside our stores with a mention that you’ll find expert product insights, company updates and occasional offers on their social pages is building the expectation of dialogue and is attracting loyalty and certainly customers. A discount may be associated but the qualification is that you want to be an insider, a participant first, and get a little something in return for it in access and savings.

Bigger counts do not actually mean bigger reach or results

It’s a critical realization and once you step down the paid like road it’s very difficult to get back up the relevancy ladder.

"Regular Friends" bringing Plus into their Facebook network

#1 – Are the features enough to compel people to make a switch?

No one is leaving a trusted tool for less and while circles are a slap in the face of the “optout” site model [heya Facebook], they are just one component. Clearly the site wasn’t built overnight [or if it was they had a heck of a lot of hands on] but it’s not perfect either. Friend circles can be circumvented with sharing, replies have no +1 or other micro interactions, events don’t exist, photo sharing is limit. When there’s an alternative that’s winning, the beta argument doesn’t hold for long.

Features also extend into privacy. Google may have the opt-in method down but with oogles of data, people are going to be wondering where those +1s are going, what a search tells their friends. Privacy is as much a feature as any site widget these days.

#2 – Can they get people in fast enough?

Google’s decision to be Google centric has cost them before and it’s clearly going to be a factor here as well. Rather than clicking an import button and Facebook [or Twitter, LinkedIn, etc] connecting in, users are stuck with a broadcast announcement that they’ve joined. As friend circles catch on auto-discovery will help people find each other but how do they go beyond the early adopters… Google has to find a way to get the technophobes, the indifferent, and even the currently happy users over… and stat.

As the invite hacking and the hype posts [like this one] wither way, there has to be the regular “life, love & work” remarks to keep people logging in. Those are what made Facebook exciting and for the non-tech crowd this is even more true… google gets just a few days with each user before they write it off and return home to see who is dating, vacationing or wants to see a movie.

#3 – Are people willing to multi-post?

This is a dicey one as Google really only gets partial control but it’s huge. When Facebook came into existence it wasn’t always overnight. Some people resisted, a few even held on for years with myspace [and the international sites] owning a few demographic groups even to this day. But what Facebook had was the niche model. One school, one group of people moved at a time and that made it extremely effective as you could literally wake up the day after joining and see all your friends had followed.

Google doesn’t get that ability, not 750 million users later. Every user who joins up has to decide, where do I post, and if 130 of their friends on Facebook we know that gets a vote. That means they have got to find a way to get people cross posting or additional posting and without any integration back or forth, that means a manual visit. It’s not an easy solve but it’s essential as every time someone heads back to see what their “bigger” network said, they risk not deciding to return.

Now since this post already has the distinct smell of doubt, I want to be clear, there’s something very compelling here and I’m hearing it not just from other social / tech / adopters but even from the more passive friends that I’ve snuck over.

It’s no secret that Facebook’s push for open is widely questioned [the “Facebook privacy chain mail” messages say enough]. With that in mind, circles represent a BIG [although by no means new] move and really do change the opportunity for social to be 360. No matter what people say there are lines in life and most of the world either steps back in what they post or who they let in… especially as you age down, and that’s where your powerhouse lies.

Where Google shines is clearly in tackling this and allowing you to combine mom, high school friends, go to vegas with friends, and coworkers into one.

Google also has the benefit of a whole host of tools which many people already use from gchat to gmail to rope in and get really feature rich. But those can hinder too… if they select something “on the shelf” rather than build what people want.

And Google doesn’t have to go “everyone” big, although it seems most logical that they will. Pushing into niches could have a solid outcome & help them avoid having to force a complete change over the short term. But there’s risk in that too… that they become a Twitter – and not in the sense of having huge power but rather having huge awareness but virtually no usage – another wasteland of early adopters who have moved on.

It goes without saying that only time will tell what happens when the “geeks” stop being the majority of users but the way things are rolling, that time will be mighty soon.

Inspirational post: First Night With Google Plus: This is Very Cool from Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web

Social media, while powerful, authentic and important only works if people see what you’re doing and that’s where advertising comes in as a symbiotic partner

The problem we see today is that people expect everything to just go viral. We’ve all be asked [told?] to make a viral video; to make a product get “out there” with sharing alone. The reality is that very few products even have a chance to “go viral”. For every blendtec or old spice is a thousand more brands with a good product that simply isn’t what people want to share around the web. That’s why on any given day the top 50 YouTube videos include one product related videos. Yup, one.

Advertising is the dependable version of viral

Instead of asking “how do I make this ‘go viral’”, which is something you can’t control or guarantee, you need to ask yourself: “how do I take something that is credible, authentic and trustworthy and make it get exposed”. This is why advertising becomes remains so important in an era of social media – advertising is your guaranteed source of visibility that insures success whether or not a viral pickup takes place.

Social Media changes how you advertise

Google AdWords, Targeted Banners, Lead Generation Campaigns, Facebook Ads. Advertising has been used to sell your brand’s value under your voice, with your credibility attached. Social integrates into this chain to make your ads authentic and stand out [at least until everyone gets on board].

Rather than saying “50% off on the Amazing Widget” say “50% off on the 5-star rated Widget” with quotes from reviews visible around the ad unit. Rather than a stock photo of actors enjoying their new RV pull in a video from your Facebook campaign of a real family talking about their experience with a link to read more stories. Bring the same transparency you have on your reviews, Facebook page, user community and other social features right out and into your advertising – the more real time and authentic, the better.

Product packaging is another great place to bring social to life and get in front of the customer. Think about two boxes with nearly the same product, one has a summary rating, an expert rating and a QR / RFID / short url link to read more reviews while the other doesn’t even have a mobile friendly site. Even at a higher price the brand willing to put it all out there is worth a closer look. Mobile has become far too prevalent to think you can hide or out impulse research, so instead beat the customer too it.

Don’t assume that simply because you have UGC on your website or social channels people are going to find it. You need to tell them it’s there.

Before I explain what EdgeRank is and how it could be killing your Facebook program, we have to look at the history of Facebook. When the site was new people connected with their direct network, whether that was fellow students or good friends, but now the joke is about how your grandma, the geek from high school, even your middle school gym teacher are all your Facebook friends. Add to that tens of thousands of businesses, charities and organizations all vying for your “LIKE” and the network has become awfully big – too big to just show you everything at once.

Enter EdgeRank, Facebook’s system for devising the first posts to show a user when they login and look at their news feed. Contrary to popular belief, the feed is not rank ordered on time and even if a user clicks the “view most recent” override, it is still personalizing out updates. Exact figures aren’t published [nor is the full details of how EdgeRank works so everything is a bit of conjecture] but I’ve seen estimates that place as few as 40% of brand posts as “viewable” to a given user on their news feed. 6 out of 10 never have a chance.

Now consider that something in the realm of 90%++ of all action on Facebook starts via the news feed. Pretty important to be seen there.

Just how potent is EdgeRank? Recently I’ve been working with a page for a company where we are talking about literally giving up on adding fans and working to re-engage or even replace who they already have. Why? Effectiveness. When this brand had just 150,000 “fans” their views ratio was 2:1 meaning that for every post nearly 300,000 impressions were generated – awesome exposure. Growth accelerated significantly thanks to ads and viral momentum but quality took a dive and the ratio has flipped to 1:3. Today with 600k fans they get fewer views with 5 times the users.

So how do you influence your EdgeRank to keep your posts in the top news feed, getting seen and doing their job? You think about your page the same way Facebook does — like a user. Continue to part II for 10 tips on what to do, and what to avoid, to maximize your Facebook views.

People may love your product but is that enough to get you selected as the brand they follow if you don't tell them why?

Step back and think about it… the call to action “become a fan” has got to be one of the most loaded statements in the history of marketing.

- A lifetime of purchases and evangelizing, was I not a fan before I joined your Facebook page?

- Is my “like” that strong of an endorsement that it makes me a fan versus just a follower?

- What is a fan? What’s so special about being one?

We can do better.

Exclusives, Useful Updates, Coupons, and even Just Brand Affinity can all be reasons to join up. But we have to spell them out so people know what they're getting.

Joining your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or other channels may joining something on a “social” site but it’s still a conversion action just like any other to the user. They’re a person, you’re a business. Thankfully, all that time we spend in building content strategies, making the right branded applications and offering a strong combination of “value” from discounts to inside looks to contests is all the ammo to sell joining up. It just needs to be sold.

So let’s stop telling people just to “fan” or “follow” or “like” us and tell them the full message.

1. What is it you want them to do exactly?
2. What does they get for doing this? What’s in it for them?
3. What does becoming a fan really mean? What do you expect out of a fan? What can they do?

Without a defined offering for why someone should join it’s hard to know their value as a business either. How are you measuring likes versus loyalty in Facebook if the only goal is one action?

Thankfully the YouTube community has held onto some sense here and I’ve found a great video explaining how you get followers by PhilipDeFranco, a top followed channel. Not surprisingly, aside from a few gimmick ideas it all comes back down to having a clear offering that lets you stand out. Surprised?

Later this week I’ll be posting up a few examples of campaigns that successful brands are using to drive social interaction but if you have your own story, leave a comment.

When daily deals first launched,  hitting the minimum participants to “activate” the deal wasn’t a given and that made them social as people would have to bring friends in to get things going. Years later Groupon, LivingSocial and other leaders have too many users to have to worry about “qualifying” thus the social aspect is gone & deals have become glorified coupons that you just buy into.

Now don’t get me wrong. I may have critiqued the relevancy of daily deals in the past and am now joining others in questioning their business viability but I don’t doubt the potential of deals as a gateway for discovery, and value service to consumers – they just need a little network power to get to exciting. So as we watch Facebook prepare to roll out its deal offering, Google move into social & deals and Groupon and LivingSocial battle for control of the current market, I thought I’d take a crack at what the future could look like.

Deals are better when they’re done together [rhyming not intended]

Late one evening, a few weeks back I got a text from a friend (let’s call her “Sally”) asking if I wanted to jump in on a LivingSocial deal for White Water Rafting. Sally, knowing I raft frequently, wanted to put together a group trip and saw the deal as as great opportunity. To me that’s exactly what daily deals are for: great offers on services that people were considering, and now have a tipping point to take action on — together.

Problem is, it was 10pm, the deal expired in 2 hours and we all had to commit to make it work – no one wanted to take the first plunge and the deal was missed.

Risk stops purchases; but what if you could remove it?

What if, rather than a mass text, followed by a lot of hoping and messaging back, my friend, had been able to set the whole thing up as a group deal contingent on her network participating:

- Sally decides this deal is for her, looks at the calendar, picks an available date, creates an event and invites 20 people who she’d like to have show up… It hits their email, sms, facebook wall or twitter handle, their call.

-The threshold on the deal is also set based on the offer type. For white water rafting its one full boat – 6 heads. More can join but without 6 the deal is not on. Other services could have a threshold as low as 2 for a spa day or 4 for dinner out, but always a group.

-Sally’s friends get an alert that there’s a deal expiring in a few hours with the right details – the time, the place and the cost. Since they already have accounts they can confirm it right from their iphones but there’s no risk, the deal only goes if the threshold is hit.

-5 people are excited to try out rafting and convince #6 to join via a Facebook group message. The deal is on. Go Sally!

Whether it’s white water rafting, learning to rock climb, or a spa day, deals are overwhelmingly for services people do together but the current systems drive individual purchase and does nothing to address the fear of being the only one to go in.

By flipping the model back to its roots and enforcing a commitment minimum, not from all participants, but from a network of friends the risk is gone and there’s a whole new motivation for people to buy.

————–

Update: as of 8/26/2011 Facebook has announced they are closing down their deal service. In my opinion they had the best shot at truly creating a discovery tool by leveraging what no other deal site really has: relationships. But ultimately it’s a peripheral service and without enough attention, likely never got the legs to have a fair shot.