There are a lot of tools out there. Some might help your brand. Others probably won’t, but that’s why setting strategy with goals and objectives is so important. It will be your go-to guide when it’s platform decision time.

It’s vital to maintain that level of focus.

Everywhere Can Mean Nowhere

When hearing about the growing popularity of Tumblr or the referral traffic potential of Pinterest or even after seeing a competitor take off with a Facebook Page, it can be difficult to stay focused. Instead, brands can find themselves feeling that they need to present on every platform out there, but that’s not the answer.

Time, money and resources are limited, and every platform must be evaluated through that filter. Maybe referral traffic from Pinterest is really important, but it might be less resource intensive to incorporate more tactics that will drive referral traffic in on an already established platform like a Facebook Page.

New platforms don’t come with new resources, and without the people, processes and tools in place to support them, brands can find themselves with such a light presence on multiple platforms that they’re not being effective anywhere.

Evaluate and Re-evaluate

Social media isn’t stagnant. Brands should always be evaluating their current efforts, thinking about additional opportunities and identifying if what they’re doing is as effective as it once was or could be more effective.

It comes down to a few key questions.

First, what budget, time and resources can be devoted? If there’s just enough for a small number of platforms (or even one), that’s fine. Invest in them to their fullest, measure and prove their value to earn additional investment for more.

Second, follow the customer or prospect. Don’t jump on a tool because it’s new and grabbing headlines. Jump on it because your audience is.

Third, think about the story your brand has to tell and how consumers interact with it. Some platforms are better than others, depending on the brand and the content it has to share. The type of media has a big impact. More visual brands might look to a more niche platform like Instagram (pending the qualifications above, of course), while brands that connect with customers through thought leadership might look at corporate blogging as a potential outlet.

There isn’t a magic formula. Some brands can and should be present across multiple platforms, but brands shouldn’t try this unless they have the infrastructure in place to maximize each of the platforms’ potential. Social media marketing is an investment of much more than money. It takes a lot of time, too. Invest where it matters.

This week’s headlines: Social TV Momentum Continues, Zynga Reports Stable Financial Earnings, Twitter Not Ready for an IPO in the Near Future, Twitter Rolling Out Self-Serve Ad Platform to 10,000 Businesses and Facebook Timeline Coming Soon to Brand Pages.

The week’s news quick hits cover: Facebook for Windows Mobile Gets an Update, Apple Lowers the Cost for iAds Again, Twitter Admits that It Too Uploads Your Phone Contacts, Facebook Introduces Verified Accounts Program, New Open Graph Apps Come to Facebook, Mac OSX Mountain Lion Resembles iOS with Twitter Integration and More, Yelp’s IPO Scheduled for March 2 and Groupon Announces VIP Program.

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Social Media Marketing Is About Action

Social media marketing isn’t about media at all. It’s about behavior—either amplifying it, encouraging it or making it spread. The reason marketers use social media platforms for marketers should be driven by the desire to influence consumer behavior in one direction or another.

That behavior might be sharing a brand or service with a colleague, discovering your brand’s content over someone else’s, contributing thoughts or ideas to make the business better and so on. All of these behaviors exist in the offline world. Social media’s potential is amplifying the reach these behaviors can have and the speed in which they reach others.

A Facebook Liker means nothing. Another follower on Twitter is worth $0.00. One more YouTube view does nothing for the business. It’s the behavior that these channels can drive that has business benefits.

Don’t Be Driven by Platforms

A social media marketer’s job isn’t to establish a brand’s presence across multiple online properties. Anyone can do that. The job of social media marketing is the same as any other marketing channel—affect consumer behavior. Our job is to tell the brand’s story to the people who will care about it through the right channels. Platforms don’t affect behavior.

This week’s headlines: The Incompatibility of Privacy and Social Networks, Mobile Ads Officially Coming to Facebook and Pinterest Makes Money Through Affiliate Links without Disclosing.

The week’s news quick hits cover: The Super Bowl Makes Social Television History, Facebook’s Active User Claims Come Into Question, Amazon and Viacom Make Video Streaming Deal, Facebook Reveals Its Plans for App Development and LinkedIn Reaches 150 Million Users.

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Don't stop with listening. Talk back! Leave a review, find us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.

Have a great week.

Getting started typically starts with one of three things: an agency providing guidance/framework and execution, a small team of one or two people finding their way toward some kind of measure of success or a consultant coming in to provide guidance and framework for the organization moving forward.

The Getting Started Phase

Leveraging social media marketing doesn’t come with more resources. Time, money and people have to come from somewhere, and there’s generally a phase of getting things off the ground. That might include an agency executing everything or a small team managing the business’ efforts. Those scenarios make sense in the beginning more often than not, but that’s not how the business should stay.

Often, businesses find themselves stuck in this “getting started” phase. They’re able to check social media marketing off of the list and say that they’re making it happen. The bottom line is this is only successful and scalable for so long.

Social media’s value doesn’t really show itself in this phase. These are the first steps to making social a much larger, much more important part of the overall business.

It’s an All-In Effort

Customer relationships don’t belong with an agency or consultant, and they don’t belong in a silo within an organization. Social media allows brands to get close to their customers and external stakeholders and then keep them close. Outside help like an agency or consultant may play a role in educating, providing training and starting the initial phases of external engagement, but the role of building relationships should transition to the business. No one knows the brand or the customer better.

That doesn’t mean the transition should be to a small social media team either. Every stakeholder across the organization should eventually either be communicating with customers or be informed of insights garnered from those who are engaging. That way social insight is acted upon across the organization because the insights garnered can impact product development, communications, human resources, customer service and so on.

The process is slow and often painful. It’s a new way of thinking about customers and the way business is done across the organization, but being a social brand isn’t about a Facebook campaign or creating YouTube videos. It’s a transformation of how internal customer information is shared and how external relationships with customers are nurtured and leveraged to deliver a better product, service and business result. Everyone is involved, not just marketing, PR or digital teams.

The Long-Term Goal

It is a lot of hard work, but the result is the creation of a social business, a company that views social media not as a marketing channel but as a catalyst for building deep relationships with all business stakeholders—internal and external, customers and employees.

The benefits extend across the organization. Businesses can achieve more efficient and effective communication, deeper insights coming directly from customers and better connected, more empowered employees. Customers are more satisfied, product development is the result of co-creation with customers, and activating customers as stakeholders makes them more loyal.

All of this takes the form of an organization with the right people, communication strategies and technologies to connect all aspects of the business. Departments who are connected to consumers are sharing insights across the organizations, and all areas of the business are empowered to use the closer connections with customers to create more compelling, consumer-driven products, services and communication. Businesses may even empower social media mentors to lead each department and steward that thinking forward until it becomes a part of the DNA.

It’s Not Easy

The process is tough. Start-ups are able to incorporate this kind of thinking from the ground-up, which is in many ways easier. Although, they have their own challenges to contend with. Established businesses have the immense challenge of adapting what’s gotten them to where they are, but adapting is essential if they hope to truly use social media to make the business better.

Agencies and consultants can and should help in many instances. But the long-term goal shouldn’t be to outsource this mindset and mode of getting work done. The vision should be for the business to change, not to tack on another marketing channel and cross social media off the to-do list.

Building a Social Brand

Whenever a brand gets started in the social space, it’s starting with what is essentially a blank slate. This is a reintroduction with a consumer in a space they haven’t seen the brand before. Everything matters.

Authenticity is important, but that doesn’t mean just going with your gut. Everything we say, do and think in the social space should be tied back to the brand. Consumers should be able to tell (or at least have an idea) from a single tweet or Facebook post what a brand stands for and wants to deliver.

The Ingredients of Glue

Creating this experience and feeling that can live in a single tweet, YouTube video or Facebook post doesn’t come by accident. No matter the platform, no matter the time, no matter the form content takes, every successful social media campaign has at least three components: tone, purpose and content. Each component builds off the other, and each will be unique depending upon the brand. That’s why copycat attempts typically fail. The ingredients are incompatible. Every brand needs to build these components for themselves.

Tone: This is how the brand feels and sounds in the social space. It’s the brand architecture conveyed with personality. The goal is to make it clear how the brand will sound, what it likes/doesn’t like and so on. This helps everyone understand the personality they need to channel when representing the brand online. For example, if there are multiple community managers, consumers shouldn’t be able to tell when one is talking versus the other.

Purpose: This is why the brand is sharing and connecting with consumers online. This should be focused on the purpose the brand is delivering to consumers, not the purpose of social media for the company (that’s another discussion). Brands need to deliver value to their social customers, whether that purpose is delivering exclusive content, providing entertainment or sharing valuable information. Does a post asking everyone’s favorite color deliver value to them? They can probably get that elsewhere. The point is don’t be disposable.

Content: This is where it all comes together. The tone and purpose align to deliver something tangible to users like content to consume, interact with, share or build off of. All of it is communicated in a tone aligned with the brand and in a way that makes its value clear to the consumer.

These three components make the glue that bring together the best social media marketing efforts out there. That’s why they always feel unique, authentic to the brand and customer-centric.

Source: Cisco Fails With Old Spice Copycat Campaign (http://socialtimes.com/cisco-old-spice-campaign_b18558) by Megan O'Neill

This week’s headlines: Facebook Launches Timeline Movie Creator, Twitter CEO Confirms that Twitter is Not Censoring, Online Users Petition Apple to Improve Working Conditions and Facebook Files for its IPO.

The week’s news quick hits cover: Twitter CEO Explains Twitter’s Ad Offering Future is Scale and Not New Products, Online Users Petition Apple to Improve Working Conditions, Blogger Adopts Country-Specific Censorship, Tech Stocks Surge Following Facebook’s IPO Submission, Tumblr Hires an Editor-in-Chief and Zynga Tests New Advertising Option.

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Let us know what you think!Love it, hate it? Leave a review, find us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com. Let us know what you think!

An Opt-In Rollout

The effort started with Facebook allowing users to turn the Timeline feature on in December. It adopted an opt-in strategy, allowing users to activate when and if they chose to. When activated Facebook gave users a 7-day preview period to edit their Timeline settings, delete/add content and tweak to their preferences before it went live to their social connections.

What Marketers Can Learn: Social media movements are created when users are given control. Marketers can’t control the message in the social space. The best we can do is put the message out there in the most compelling way through the right channel.

Creating a “Me Too” Movement

The combination of a slow rollout and an opt-in strategy was smart because it created a rift within the Facebook community between the hip, cool Timeline users and the old profile users.

You can say what you will about Timeline, but you can’t say it doesn’t look good. Once a user sees it, he or she likely wants it. Creating this rift within the community allows Facebook to create what’s essentially a cycle of jealousy. One set of users sees the Timeline being used by others, they want it and they find out how they can sign up too.

What Marketers Can Learn: An element of exclusivity can play an effective role in building consumer participation. Whether that exclusivity is real (providing an exclusive deal or access to a segment of users) or fabricated, which is exactly what Facebook did, people will want to participate if they feel they’re being given something others aren’t.

Making It About Them

Last week Facebook announced that the final rollout phase of Timeline is underway. Within the next few weeks all users will be using the Timeline, so people who aren’t using it yet soon will be.

As addressed above, there’s bound to be a degree of user frustration with the change, but Facebook aims to change this.

It’s worked to create the Timeline Movie Maker, an app that creates a dynamic and engaging video depiction of a user’s Timeline similar to the video Facebook used to introduce Timeline (below) but custom to the user.

The result is a one-minute video capturing a user’s Facebook life from photos they’ve taken, changes in relationship statuses, events attended, places visited and so on. Once it’s created, users have the ability to edit and tweak the music and content used.

Then the magic of sharing happens. Users can post a video that’s all about them and share it with their Facebook friends.

What Marketers Can Learn: The social web isn’t about brands. It’s about consumers, and brands happen to be there.

The motivation behind a consumer sharing a brand, product and service with a friend on Facebook isn’t to help a brand. It’s because they get something from it. Whether that’s pumping up their ego, feeling good about helping others or showcasing their personality by associating it with a brand, the more marketers can make sharing about the consumer and not the brand, the more successful an effort will be.

Hopefully, you like it! Let me know. Leave a comment, connect on Twitter or send an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.

The content won't change. The podcast will keep on coming, and I'll continue to share my thoughts on social media marketing here.

Thanks for being part of Brave Ad World!

This starts with a brand’s online stake in the ground, the website. This is where the brand has the control over the content, the message and the experience from beginning to end. Brands have very few opportunities like this to encourage the sharing of such a brand-controlled experience, but it’s an opportunity often overlooked.

It Starts with the Log-On

Who wants to create another username, another password (assuming they’re creating different passwords for different websites…) and another profile on yet another website? No one. Managing our digital lives is hard enough.

eMarketer released a report that consumers are so reluctant to create new profiles, that 88% of them intentionally use incorrect information to get in the door. There’s no value in that for marketers.

The answer is simple. Consumers want the ability to use social sign-in tools when creating new profiles. These take the form of Facebook, Twitter, Google or other platform login plugins, They allow consumers to instantly link their social media profiles with the website. 77% of online buyers think this is how it should be.

There is a catch. When a brand requires consumers to create new profiles, no one owns that data except the brand. Third-party logins offer the tradeoff of more favorability from a consumers perspective and higher rates of sign-on conversion for less access and ownership over the data. That’s a questions marketers have to wrestle with. But consider the opportunity.

Websites = Social Extensions

The benefit of integrating other social platforms into a website is that it makes the site an extension of your consumers’ online interactions. The website becomes yet another channel to connect with friends, and the content they’re connecting over comes directly from your brand.

Social Login – I discussed this above, but this is the where it begins. A website can’t leverage the social graph unless it has access to it. Allow customers multiple routes to sign on: using social plugins and a brand-owned profile creation tool. Give them the option to choose how they want to connect with the site.

The value for the brand is getting consumers who would otherwise roll their eyes and go to another website to log-in, potentially making them customers over the long-term and giving the brand access to information such as their email addresses, birthdays, genders and locations that can be leveraged with a reengagement strategy.

The value for the consumer is that the website can then use that data from a social sign-on to deliver a better website experience. Brands are able to recommend products that their Facebook friends liked, potentially delivering more relevant recommendations, for example.

Social Sharing – You have them on your website. Now it’s time to give them reasons to share with their social networks. Allowing them to post a product they love to their Facebook profiles, tweet a brand-related how-to video or share a brand’s blog post is content consumers just need to have a reason to share. Integrating plug-ins that allow that to happen easily is just reason enough for many.

Shopping is social. Allowing consumers to invite their social connections into the process is just as valuable to them as it is to a brand. It gives them the ability to share relevant content with their friends, while the brand’s message breaks through the walls of the website into the social space.

Deeper Engagement – Facebook introduced “frictionless sharing” late last year during f8. Brands should view that as a cue to allow more actions to start at the website level. For example, give consumers a set of pre-defined actions that they can share with their social networks. For example, allow them to post that they “gotta have” the latest product featured on the website. Or allow them to share that a new style is “trendy” simply by clicking the action on your website. Brands should be open to making content as easy and seamless to share as possible.

Engagement doesn’t stop with sharing. Customer reviews and social recommendations are integral. Allowing consumers to leave their thoughts on products as well as recommend products and services to friends through the website allows a brand to open the door for consumers and let them feel free to connect a brand’s products with their social connections.

Everything is Social

Our constant connectedness has made everything we do social, and marketers have the power to leverage that very fact. Social isn’t a component of a media plan. It should be ingrained in every interaction a brand has with a consumer to one degree or another, and the website is the perfect place to start.

Source: Social Sign-On Is Consumers’ Choice (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008797&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4)