Brave Ad World - Episode 100

The Brave Ad World Podcast has reached the century mark with Episode 100.

This week’s headlines: NLRB Raises Questions on Social Media Policy Legality, Facebook Launches Conversion Measurement, Quora Will Host Blogs and Twitter Launches Vine.

The week’s news quick hits cover: Tumblr Allows Users to Share Panoramic Photos, Bing Gets Deeper Facebook Integration, Google+ Makes Push for Enterprise Use and Foursquare Partners with Voice Media Group for Content.

Find the latest episode in the podcast section or subscribe via iTunes. However you choose to listen, lease leave a review, contact us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.

The End of Social

Last week Foursquare made an update that opened up Foursquare.com to everyone, not just users. The available feature is called Explore, which users have known for a while. Explore uses your past check-ins, the check-ins of your friends and the behavior of others to recommend places you should go, including bars, restaurants, coffee shops, events and more. It’s all about making relevant recommendations for you.

Explore is available to everyone, whether they’re Foursquare users or not. With the update, Foursqure.com became a local search engine, competing with the likes of Google and Yelp and evolving from being a casual social network with points and mayor ships to a recommendation utility powered by social data.

Social, Search or Something Else?

This represents a larger shift. Foursquare is more than a social network. It’s a search engine for where you should go and what you should do.

Apple Maps includes ratings and reviews for businesses from Yelp. It’s not just a maps app, it’s a ratings and reviews utility.

Facebook re-introduced its Gifts app, allowing you to send real world gifts to your friends right from Facebook. It’s a social network but also an ecommerce site.

Google and Bing use social signals to influence search rankings. Social media isn’t just an engagement tool; it’s an SEO tactic.

Everything is Different but Also the Same.

We’re in an age of convergence. Platforms are merging to have more features and improve their value propositions. Foursquare started as a location-based social network. Today, it’s becoming a location utility with social features. It’s done this while still maintaining its original functionality.

This shouldn’t be a surprise.

Everything is inherently social. Now, we’re starting to see it. Before social existed in a silo as separate apps, platforms and marketing tactics. Today, everything is social. The lines have blurred, and the distinctions between platforms are less defined.

Social Media’s Time is Coming to an End

Social media is at its best when it’s integrated. Let’s face it… It makes everything else better.

If your social media team is doing its job, its time is coming to an end. Social media should be integrated in all of your marketing efforts from search, to digital to PR to traditional and beyond. Everyone in the organization should have a social mindset, not just one team.

Marketers who start with a social idea, not a pre-conceived social tactic, will see integration start to happen. Marketers who try to force social will get just that—a forced social media tactic that, while being social, had more potential for integration across other channels.

Things I’ve Learned from Lately #15

“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.

Different Networks for Different Reasons – LinkedIn polled more than 6,000 social media users to better understand their mindsets when accessing social networks. The poll found that people express different mindsets when engaging with different social platforms depending upon what they’re doing: socializing, wasting time or professionally investing time.

Key Takeaway: It shouldn’t come as a surprise that users behave differently on different platforms, but this should be taken as an even greater sign that a brand needs to mold itself to the platform vs. asking the platform to mold itself to the brand. Any brand on any network should add more value to the value already being generated by the existing community.

It’s Not What You Say, It’s When You Say It – HubSpot published a piece stating that when you post content is just as important (maybe more important) than the content you put out there. But HubSpot takes it a step further by not just telling marketers to post at the right time but also how to determine that right time.

Key Takeaway: Social media is 24/7, and that means brands are forced to connect with people outside of business hours. Make sure you’re giving your content a chance to succeed by posting it at the right time, not anytime.

You Have Nothing Without Integration – SmartBlog asked its readers: Which do you think is more difficult: planning a social media strategy or implementing it? 65% answered implementing it, and 35% answered planning it.

Key Takeaway: Planning and implementing are essential because an idea from planning is only as good as its implementation and execution. Mistakes happen when both don’t come together.

Jesse Stanchak says it best in her commentary on the poll results in which she says, “When the left hand doesn’t talk to the right, both suffer.”

Social media marketing touches every part of an organization, and to be successful, people need to communicate with others in a way that they may not be used to. Still, it’s essential, and this poll says to me that it’s one of the hardest things someone can do. Let’s start communicating.

Still Not Convinced? – A study by Appirio found, among other things, that 13% of respondents consider their businesses “anti-social” and have no plans or interest to invest in social media.

Key Takeaway: Either the respondents with no interest are the smartest business leaders out there or missing the boat big time. I find it hard to believe that any business should completely steer away from social media.

Facebook for Commerce – Mitch Joel weighs in on Facebook’s advertising merits and pitfalls, while digging into the potential of the newly relaunched Facebook Gifts. He weighs in on the potential to create an engaging experience that builds a direct relationship between Facebook and its users by merging the digital world with a physical payoff (the gift).

Key Takeaway: Facebook hasn’t cracked the code just yet, but as Mitch points out, it has the tools and the resources to compete, even to the level of Amazon, from an e-commerce perspective. Yes, Facebook’s had its issues, but it also has an infrastructure unlike any other.