Research Your Influencers
One of the biggest points from the report was highlighting the slightly disjointed relationship between brand marketers and influencers. The report says that often, brands look to influencer’s ComScore when choosing someone to work with, when in reality, this might not always be the best source for finding an influencer to work with, as the numbers do not always fairly represent the influencer. In order to establish Influencers to help your brand reach audiences that you might not have access to, conducting research beyond ComScore numbers is key. What kind of following do they have? How responsive is their community? Is it always growing? There are other elements to consider when approaching an Influencer. You also have to recognize if they will be a good fit for your brand. Just because your product might be in the same industry as an Influencer’s expertise, it might not correlate well. Research your Influencers and take a look at their community and their content before you jump right into numbers.

Measuring Your Success
There still remains the slightly sticky topic of ROI and measurement on a ‘successful’ campaign when Influencers are engaged for a promotion. Technorati’s report outlines that there is a lack of uniform metrics to effectively measure the success of campaigns. Influencers are looking to pageviews and traffic whereas brand marketers are looking at Facebook likes. Before finalizing a campaign, it is within both parties’ interests to define what a successful campaign would look like. That is to say – if the objective is brand awareness and reaching new demographics, pageviews and traffic sources might be of value. If you’re looking to Facebook likes, you might want to reach out to an Influencer who has a strong Facebook community. None the less, having a conversation prior to campaign launch about objectives will help drive the campaign forward and yield more satisfactory results.

Get Mobile
We all know by now that your brand should be social but what does that mean? It means that you should be connecting with audiences through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. 90% of brands have a presence on Facebook. That’s a staggering number – and you don’t want to be left out. YouTube and Facebook are the top two sources used on the Internet. Over the next year – spend on social will rise 59%. What’s more interesting is that spend on mobile is expected to increase 79%. With those numbers you definitely want to make sure your site is responsive (you can read more about responsive design here). You don’t want to alienate any part of your audience or advertisers by not having a mobile friendly layout for your website. Pay attention to your analytics and see where your traffic is coming from. With mobile digital spend on the rise, you definitely want to be accommodating to the trend. What are your takes on this years report?

We’d love to hear your agreements, disagreements or general comments!

Immediately, I started playing around with the functionality and different searches I could do. Once I got over the fact that I have a lot of photos that need de-tagging, I realized the bigger potential Graph Search holds for brand pages:

The Power of Like:
The beautiful thing about Graph Search is that it easily compiles my results if I want to see which of my friends ‘like’ a certain page. Graph Search also allows me to narrow or extend my search. I can then see what other pages these friends have liked and get lost in a series of clicks discovering new pages based on my friends likes:

This can easily lead me to pages I might not know existed. If enough of my friends like a page, then I will certainly check it out. Graph Search might just change the way brand pages view their amount of ‘Likes’.

Content is King:
We already know that great content makes a great brand. However, Graph Search offers the chance to see photos and videos from the pages that my friends like – that I might not yet be a fan of. If the content is compelling and I know my friends are fans, I will definitely be inclined to Like the page. This is just another reminder for brands that your content should always be your best effort and a beautifully curated page with enriching content can attract new, untouched audiences.

People will be perusing content more than ever – so make sure yours is on par.

Know Thy Community:
Graph Search could be a major game changer (if the functionality is similar to the personal function of Graph Search) for getting to know your community. Graph Search’s narrow search fields lets you really define what you’re looking for. If this option is available to Community Managers, you will be able to better discern the demographics of your community, and their other likes and interests. This can be great for cross-promotion with other brands (does a large number of your community also love hockey? That could be a great opportunity for a giveaway). It will also allow you to tailor your content to better suit your audience and make your engagement activity rise!

It will be interesting to watch how Graph Search is received over the next few months and how it will be integrated for Page admins. How could you see Graph Search affecting the way brands operate on Facebook?

We heard that Facebook had something big to tell us today – and so we all started speculating. Is it a phone? Is it a new layout? We couldn’t wait to see what Zuckerberg and his team had waiting for us today. The news was bigger than we expected as Facebook announced that they will be slowly rolling out their latest product: Graph Search. That’s right, Facebook is upping their search game.

So what does this mean for us? Through Mashable’s comprehensive liveblogging of the press event, and Facebook’s dreamy video explaining the functionality of Graph Search – it became quite clear that Facebook is taking the data-rich content of it’s users and compiling it into neat, searchable terms that will be way more accessible than it is now.

Currently, if I wanted to search each and every one of my friends that lives in New York City, there is no easy option – I have to remember who lives in NYC and visit their profile to confirm that they do in fact, live there. Now, Zuckerberg & Co. has made it a smooth process for me to stalk all my friends in NYC by entering the search term “Friends who live in New York City” and having all of their profiles displayed in front of me. Of course, it doesn’t end there.

As you can see in the video, you can search for ‘Bands my friends listen to’, ‘Friends who work at my company and like to ski’ (double whammy!), and so on. Graph Search seemingly brings the already strong community aspect of Facebook to a whole new, personalized level. On one hand, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing I can call up specific data, gain new insights about friends, and recall hilarious posts that are in the depths of my Timeline. On the other hand, it makes me weary of what information will pop up in my friend’s searches.

According to Facebook, your privacy settings dictate what will appear in searches. Graph Search allows you to look up anything that was shared with you, or that you had shared with others, “including public content,”. If you’ve hidden a photo from your Timeline – but not detagged yourself (same goes with posts and location tags), that item will still appear in searches. So now I’m thinking I need to comb over my content to see what I do and do not want appearing. According to Mashable, as Facebook unrolls Graph Search, a notification will appear at the top of your page reminding you to review your content. Phew!

Of course, Graph Search is not limited to just searching through your friends and personal pages. The impact that Graph Search will have for Brands is potentially huge. Community Managers will be able to gain greater insight into their community’s likes and interests. Unlocking the great potential to delve deeper into your community’s preferences can allow you to tailor more meaningful content. Another example provided by Mashable’s liveblog was the potential for cross-brand pollination, as one person pointed out, a search for, “‘Yogurt liked by BMW owners,’ etc.” can be run. The information that you can learn about your audience could yield very interesting developments for brands.

What about normal web search results? Bing is still very much going to be integrated – if you want to do a search for “restaurants in Toronto” Bing will provide the answers. As someone who rarely uses Facebook for anything search related, this is definitely a game changer for me – and I for one, am interested to see how the changes will roll out over the next few months. According to Mashable, Zuckerberg made sure to remind everyone that this product is still in beta.

But, you can still get thee-self over to the FB headquarters and join the waiting list for Graph Search beta today, and check out more about Graph Search. We’d love to know your thoughts about the new product – will you be using Facebook as a search tool now? How do you think this will weigh in on privacy issues? Leave your comment below!

And other times they can become annoying, frustrating or boring. The key is finding a way to turn those repetitive questions into quality answers that lead your community exactly where you want them. While also providing quality information and resolution for your community.

The challenge lies in how you direct them without becoming stale, short, sarcastic or bored. The truth of the matter is that most of the people that Tweet at you or send Facebook messages haven’t taken a look at your feed or previous posts or the questions that other people have asked. They have their question and they would like their answer.

With that in mind, here are some tips that we have that may help you moving forward with your repetitive community.

• Act like it’s the first time that you’ve ever heard the question. Think to yourself, “great question” and answer it like you may never hear it again.
• Remember that there is a very good chance that the person asking the question is new to your brand and has no background on the subject. While you may spend 98% of your life thinking about your brand and products and services, they don’t. They asked the question because they don’t have the answer.
• You are the expert. Your community comes to you with questions because they expect that you will have the answers that they don’t have. Whether this is the 1st time or 500th time that someone has asked you about product X from your brand is irrelevant, you’re the expert with the answer that they need. Give it to them.
• Use your resources. If your brand has a website with product info pages, news or blog posts use that content to answer questions and get your community members more engaged with your brand. Also, you can use content you have created for facebook, pinterest, youtube or other networks to help with reources.
• Be thankful for the questions and the community. Without them there is no brand, no product, no service and no you. While it may not be glamorous or exciting every time you hit refresh on the page, it’s why we’re here.

Every question that gets asked is an opportunity to raise awareness of your brand, improve brand sentiment, cement your brand as an industry leader and HELP YOUR COMMUNITY. Use them to your advantage. Seize those opportunities and create something larger than what you have now.

In the end that’s why we’re here as community managers. To manage, help, engage and interact with the community. Keep up the great work!

For a while, banner ads that read “Find Out Who Is Searching For You On Facebook!” were popping up all over the place. Many people clicked on them, only to be disappointed. It isn’t possible to find that information out. Until now. A guy named Jeremy, on his blog TheKeesh.com has discovered a way to get into the guts of the Facebook search mechanism and shed some light on the mechanics of what is going on.

While doing some work with Facebook, Jeremy wondered if it was possible to type faster than the Facebook auto-complete feature. He discovered that it wasn’t and in the process discovered a file called first_degree.php, with some very interesting JSON info (basically JSON is a data exchange format that is readable in plaintext). This file contains a list of the Facebook people you search for, and view the most often. It’s the naughty inside your brain when you’re surfing Facebook converted into a Text file. I imagine some people won’t be surprised, but will be embarrassed when the list is populated with high school flames, attractive people from their office and lots of exes. Next to each name entry is a positive or negative number, which they use as a sort of popularity rankings system. TheKeesh.com has made it dead simple to find and view this information. They’ve created a bookmarklet, available on their site, which you drag into your browsers tool bar. Next, disable the ‘Safe Browsing’/HTTPS security setting in Facebook. Click the bookmarklet, shield your eyes and the list will pop-up. It is truly that easy.

Anyone who works with Facebook in a marketing or data capacity has definitely wondered how the algorithm they use works to rank your friends when you search. This isn’t the whole solution to the puzzle, but it’s definitely an integral part, and an interesting one at that. My guess is that Facebook won’t be happy when they discover that this information, and an accompanying easy to use bookmarklet, are out in the wild. If you’re interested in experimenting with this data, get cracking, because a fix and take down notice can’t be far behind. It’s my hope that some smart people with much more knowledge about code and search algorithms jumps on this information and makes the picture even clearer. I also have to give huge props to Jeremy for discovering this info, building the bookmarklet to make it accessible to everyone and sharing it with the world. Very well done.

When Facebook makes changes, they tend to add them in them quietly, on the sly. That is certainly the case this week, as Facebook made big changes to the way it handles user privacy and online games. It’s definitely important to keep watch on anything Facebook does, because it almost always effects the way your personal and business accounts work.

It came to light this week that Facebook has been importing the contacts from your mobile device into your Facebook account by default, and in some cases sharing this information with third party vendors to “improve your Facebook experience”. No thanks. Not good. If you have the Facebook App on your iPhone, Blackberry or Android device, you need to investigate and check if your contacts are safe and sound. Go to your Profile settings, and check under “Imported Contacts”. If you see your entire phone book there, then your contacts have been imported. If it’s blank, your OK.

Getting your contacts out of FB’s clutches, and keeping them out is a two step process. First, open up the FB app on your mobile device. Under the settings tab, make sure the “Sync Contacts” setting is not checked. Do this first. Next, go int the settings on your Facebook account through the browser on your computer. Under the “Contacts” settings, click the Remove link on the Facebook Remove Imported Contacts page. A message will pop up, telling you this will take a few moments, and then your contacts are safe for the time being.

This is a pretty sneaky move on Facebook’s part. It’s especially disturbing for those of us that use Facebook for our businesses. Having your confidential business contacts picked over by strangers running a social network doesn’t leave you feeling good. There haven’t been any reports of this information being misused, yet. However, we all know that web security is only as strong as its’ weakest link, and all it takes is one rogue employee to really mess with your business, by messing with the people you do business with.

Facebook also introduced a number of changes to its’ gaming engine, seemingly in response to the launch of Games on Google +. If your business is active using Facebook games for promotions, or as a way to attract new users to your product, this is definitely something to pay attention to.

First, on the UX side, Facebook has increased the size of the area on the screen available for gaming. This will let developers create gaming apps that have more robust graphic content, more details and look better overall. The relationship between game developers and Facebook has been somewhat rocky, so maybe giving them a better visual platform will smooth things over. It could also be seen as a way to keep developerss writing games for Facebook, as opposed to jumping over to Google +.

Facebook games also introduced a “Live Ticker”, which will increase the connectivity between users who game. You can now see what your friends are playing, what they’re scoring and vicariously game along with them. This isn’t a huge technological jump, but feels more like “catching up” with the other services out there. These aren’t ground breaking features, but will be a big step towards making social gaming on the platform more social. Google + already has similar social gaming features, so view this as a case of keeping up with the Joneses, if you like. Finally, and also not too exciting, but useful, you can now bookmark your favorite games as you play them.

Looking at these changes from 10,000 feet, it appears that Facebook views Google + as a real threat to its’ market share. Grabbing your contacts, to gather more analytic data on you, to “improve your experience” seems to be a way to make sure you stick around. Some might actually see importing your contacts into Facebook as an actual useful feature. Maybe, if they asked your permission first. The improved gaming experience is absolutely a defensive move, meant to make certain that Facebook Games can keep up with the new games on Google +.

Economics 101 will tell you that when there is fierce competition, the consumer is usually the one that benefits by getting more bang for their buck. With Facebook and Google + about to go toe to toe, will that be the case? It’s too early to tell, and so far, with all this shady sneaking around the consumer seems to be on the losing end of things. Where do you see the Facebook vs. Google + battle going in a few months from now? Can there ever be a clear winner? We’d love to hear what you think, so drop us a comment and let’s get this conversation started.