Beacon512 Blog

Some of the most innovative brands have already begun to experiment with lesser known social platforms that cater to targeted audiences and test the waters of new advertising models. Many of these campaigns are pure trial-and-error efforts, and there certainly aren’t any one-size-fits-all solutions out there.

At the Social Marketers Summit in Prague today, I spoke on 10 of the most intriguing, but lesser known, location-based, Q&A, press and microblogging social platforms out there and how more businesses can start using them. The PowerPoint presentation is embedded below, and the following information expands upon it, acting as a guide to how businesses can get their hands dirty with these platforms.

If your business is already active on the platforms mentioned, let us know how you are using them in the comments below.

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Location-Based Services

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Many people predicted that 2010 would be the year of location. By most accounts, those predictions have come to fruition. With Facebook’s acquisition of Hot Potato in preparation for the launch of Facebook Places, along with Foursquare’s () explosion of brand partnerships and Twitter’s launch of location-based trending topics and location-tagged tweets, it’s no wonder everyone is all abuzz about location.

While Foursquare and Facebook Places are taking the spotlight in this arena, other apps, including Gowalla, SCVNGR, Whrrl, Loopt Star and Brightkite are making headway, as well.

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1. Gowalla ()

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Tagline: “Keep up with your friends, share the places you go, and discover the extraordinary in the world around you.”

Based in Austin, Texas, Gowalla is a location-based app that was launched in 2009 by Josh Williams and Scott Raymond. The service has roughly 450,000 users, which Gowalla calls “passport holders.” Users check in to spots and complete multi-stop trips in order to receive passport stamps, pins and virtual goods. Some of the virtual goods are redeemable for real-world items.

Businesses can jump aboard by curating trips or creating limited-edition pins or items. Some recent brands to test these features out include USA TODAY, National Geographic, and Red Bull.

AT&T and TOMS Shoes had a very successful campaign recently, according to Josh Williams, co-founder and CEO of Gowalla. Between August 16 and 29, Gowalla users were encouraged to commemorate history as TOMS Shoes was preparing to give its one millionth pair of shoes to a child in need. Participants checked in to various technology and apparel locations for a chance to win one of the many prizes that were being given away, including TOMS Shoes, an AT&T smartphone or an AT&T netbook. One person received the grand prize: a trip to Argentina this fall with TOMS Shoes for the company’s One Millionth Pair Shoe Drop. Here’s a look at their successes:

• More than 5,500 people were entered to win the grand prize trip to Argentina for the TOMS Shoes One Millionth Pair Shoe Drop, and more than 1,000 people received one of the prizes.
• More than 25% of the people who were entered to win the grand prize and who won an item chose to share the news via Facebook () and/or Twitter ().
• More than 2,000 people checked in at AT&T stores during the two week period of the promotion.
• More than 522,000 users were reached via more than 700 tweets following their checkins, along with numerous retweets.
  • “The ability to do very tight targeting — people near your store, people that eat sushi three times a month, people who visit your competitor’s businesses, places where it will rain tomorrow, etc. This typically combines location targeting with time of day, and some other profile elements (age, gender, etc.).”
  • “The ability to reach users in an interactive way on their cell phones.”
  • “The ability to run a loyalty program and offer virtual and real-world rewards to consumers with no operational expense or staff training.”

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2. SCVNGR

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Tagline: “Go places. Do challenges. Earn points!”

Founded by Seth Priebatsch, SCVNGR is a location-based social game that launched this year. The platform enables users to earn badges and points for checking in to places. Users can also earn rewards, in the form of discounts and freebies, through completing challenges, such as snapping a picture, saying something, or completing a social check-in.

Upon launch, SCVNGR had already signed on 1,000 locations across the U.S. to offer freebies and discounts to users through a sophisticated rewards system. Priebatsch explained enthusiastically that, “Something like 20-25 new enterprises are beginning to build on SCVNGR every single day (and that’s accelerating like whoa).”

If your business is looking to provide an adventure, then perhaps SCVNGR’s treks (curated lists of places) or custom challenges are the answer. Columbia Pictures recently teamed up with SCVNGR to promote Eat, Pray, Love, the blockbuster film, featuring Julia Roberts, about a woman who goes on a yearlong journey to find herself.

The SCVNGR campaign featured a special Eat, Pray, Love () trek that spanned 26 U.S. cities, complete with challenges and special edition badges. The “No Carb Left Behind” challenge, for example, appears at Italian restaurants, gains users two points, and unlocks the “Eat” badge. This is a particularly compelling partnership, as the app and movie are both about discovery and adventure.

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3. Whrrl

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Tagline: “Check in, unlock Societies, unleash your Footstream.”

Whrrl is a social location-based game that launched in late 2007 and now boasts over 300,000 users. Unlike other location-based apps, Whrrl is based on Societies. Users check in to locations and complete recommendations inputted by other users in order to join Societies.

John Kim, vice president of product management and marketing at Pelago explained that Whrrl has taken a different direction than other location apps. “Societies are the cornerstone of Whrrl, because if you have a framework based around Societies, you can create content targeted towards those people. Whrrl uses a user’s social graph, checkins and recommendations (what they do or recommend) to personalize the user’s experience. The world is about the long tail of passions. Societies are organized around passions or topics, not just what’s nearby.”

Businesses can target certain types of people who check in at particular types of venues by creating custom Societies and Society Rewards. Society Rewards are incentives for being a member of a particular Society (), and can include freebies, discounts and raffle entries.

Murphy USA, a gasoline company, for example, created the Murphy USA National Society, which users join by checking in at Murphy USA gas stations. Upon checking in, users are presented with a chance to win $50 of free gasoline. Odds of winning are weighted based on the number of checkins a user has logged.

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4. Loopt Star

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http://www.youtube.com/v/rW6Zp7FAGpo?fs=1&hl=en_US

Tagline: “Go places, find friends, get stuff.”

Loopt Star is the newest of the Loopt location-based social apps, which also include Loopt and Loopt Mix. The three platforms collectively boast 4 million users. Launched just a few months ago, Loopt Star is a virtual loyalty card within a mobile rewards game. Users check in to locations to earn rewards, including points and discounts, based on a set of factors designated by the establishments. A business owner can target by time of day, day of week, and number of times a person has previously checked in, for example.

Businesses can get started with Loopt Star by offering real-life or virtual rewards. The platform can also be utilized to create highly targeted ads for specific locations.

One of Loopt Star’s recent hits was a partnership with Virgin America. To promote its upcoming non-stop flights from San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX) to Mexico, Virgin America offered $1 two-for-one taco deals and a two-for-one ticket offer on the new flights to users who checked in to either SFO, LAX or one of Virgin America’s mobile taco truck locations between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. PT on August 31st.

The campaign was highly successful, as 89% of those who checked in completed the process to receive a coupon. That day ranked as the fifth highest sales day in Virgin America’s history. As an example of the turnout, nearly 1,300 people checked in at the San Francisco taco truck during the few short hours of the promotion.

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5. Brightkite ()

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Tagline: “The simple way to keep up with friends & places.”

Brightkite launched in 2006 and claims 5.5 million users. It enables users to check in and post comments at any location. It also features photo-posting, messaging, comments, tips, tiered rewards, and group chat capabilities.

Brightkite CMO Rob Lawson said that brands are attracted to a range of opportunities when it comes to marketing on the platform, including:

Starbucks recently partnered with Brightkite to target users who checked in near Starbucks coffee shops, as well as their competitors’ coffee shops. To kick off the partnership, they launched Frappuccino happy hour (3:00-5:00 p.m. from May 7-16). By checking in at a Starbucks during happy hour, users received a half-priced Frappuccino and the ability to browse through special edition Frappuccino badges and pick their favorite to add to their Brightkite profile.

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Q&A Platforms

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LinkedIn Answers is a well-tested platform for sourcing expert opinions and demonstrating business acumen, and the newly launched Facebook Questions could also prove to be yet another source to showcase expertise. But there are two other platforms worth a look — Aardvark and Quora.

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6. Aardvark ()

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Tagline: “Tap the knowledge of people in your network!”

Aardvark is a question-and-answer platform recently acquired by Google. A user simply asks a questions, and then Aardvark algorithmically determines the best person within the user’s network to answer the question.

Company representatives can use Aardvark to become recognized experts in topics pertaining to their careers or companies. Within my network, for example, David Berkowitz, the director or emerging media at 360i, identifies himself as a source regarding 360i questions that may come up. While Berkowitz admits that there isn’t a high demand for 360i-specific questions per se, he comments that professional users should “Keep an eye out for when people are asking something in your area of expertise and then answer as thoughtfully as you can without selling anything.”

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7. Quora

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Tagline: “A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”

Co-founded by Facebook’s former CTO Adam D’Angelo, Quora is a Q&A platform that enables anyone to ask or answer a question. Users can follow people, questions and topics. If you don’t find a topic of interest, you can create new topics.

The crowdsourced voting feature is advantageous for people hoping to be seen as experts in a certain area. All answers can be voted up or down. If you are truly a knowledgeable source on a particular subject, chances are that you’ll rise to the top as a subject matter expert.

For a look at a true brand advocate at work, check out Harry Heymann, lead engineer at Foursquare, and his Quora profile. He fields a sizable amount of questions on his company and product, including some recent questions about Foursquare’s Bing thumbnails and servers.

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Platforms for Press

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Starting with PRNewswire’s acquisition of ProfNet in 1992, the press game became a lot more direct, and these days, social media and PR go hand in hand. Besides tweeting and connecting on LinkedIn (), though, journalists and PR pros also enjoy social platforms specific to their needs. Two such platforms stand out — Help a Reporter Out and NewsBasis.

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8. Help a Reporter Out

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Tagline: “Everyone’s an expert at something.”

With 150,000 active users, Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is an excellent source for journalists looking for sources or experts looking to get free press. Journalists submit queries and sources respond to those queries, which are sent out in an e-mail newsletter thrice a day, as well as via HARO’s Twitter feed.

Brands should be taking advantage of platforms like HARO. Evan Fray-Witzer, a partner at small law firm Ciampa Fray-Witzer, LLP, attests:

“HARO has been incredible for my small law firm. In just the last few months, I’ve had placements in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and TheStreet.com. I’ve also had a number of other reporters contact me and use me for background information, which in turn tends to lead to use in other stories.”

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9. NewsBasis

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http://www.youtube.com/v/GSN_wgIpq9g?fs=1&hl=en_US

Tagline: “Better media relations for journalists and companies.”

Having launched just one month ago, NewsBasis has already attracted 3,300 registered sources and 580 journalists, of which a majority are active.

Darryl Siry, founder and CEO of NewsBasis, told us about the company’s current goals and future plans:

“The mission for NewsBasis is to make the marketplace for ideas in media relations more efficient. Any journalist who wants to more efficiently discover sources and new angles for stories should join NewsBasis. Any company, or company rep (including non-profits, academic institutions and individual experts) who desire to engage the media to build their profile or brand should be on the NewsBasis platform.

“Ostensibly, the benefits are the ability to drive media mentions very efficiently because our system is designed to analyze data and route requests to the most relevant expert sources. This approach will be applied in the reverse order later in our development where brands and marketers can pitch on the system and have those pitches routed to the most relevant or interested journalists.”

NewsBasis focuses on relevancy. To achieve that, Siry imagines adding a way for the community to rate sources and choose subject matter experts in much the same way that the eBay feedback system works. And to prevent spam, he imagines that a block option could be useful, stating, “If you get blocked by enough people, you’re gone.” That’s certainly incentive enough to mind one’s P’s and Q’s.

Siva Sanmuga, vice president at Callture, a startup telecom provider told us that within a week of signing up for NewsBasis, a journalist from eWeek requested his input on how Google Voice within Gmail will affect Skype. He attested:

“The cost for a PR company is very high. I ran into NewsBasis and thought it fit our need perfectly. I can put out our stories to journalists directly. I can also give my input on a story a journalist is working on. I personally believe that NewsBasis is going to revolutionize the PR industry.”

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Microblogging

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When you think “microblogging,” you probably think “Twitter.” Rightfully so. Having recently surpassed 145 million users, Twitter is still one of the most buzzed about social platforms.

As there are many ways to use Twitter for business, we definitely advocate getting your tweet on. But for those projects that you’d like to have greater control of, consider StatusNet.

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10. StatusNet

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http://www.youtube.com/v/eUgLR232Cnw?fs=1&hl=en_US

Tagline: “Bring the conversation to your domain.”

StatusNet, in the words of the company, is an “open source microblogging application, aiming to be an alternative to Twitter.” It’s main benefit is that it “helps you share and connect in real-time within your own domain. With StatusNet you can encourage collaboration, build and engage your community, and be in command of your brand.”

StatusNet’s application is a great idea for private installations in which a company wants to control the data that is shared. For example, Motorola utilized StatusNet to build its global internal social communications tool, called Motmot, named after a family of birds.

“Many of the usage patterns that we see now were not envisioned back when we first adopted StatusNet,” Rami Levy, team leader at Motorola Open Source Technologies, told StatusNet in a case study [PDF]. “Overall, I would definitely say that StatusNet has revolutionized our internal social communications.”

If your business is looking for a secure way to host a microblogging or sharing service, StatusNet is a great option.

These 10 services may not be the most talked about social platforms out there, but they are worth learning about. Test () them out, get to know them, and let us know what you think. And if you have suggestions of your own, add them in the comments below.

by Erica Swallow

Short of saying we’ll all be doing business from Foursquare-fueled hover cars, the future of social media and small business is very much an unknown. While most social media-savvy businesses undoubtedly have an online presence, the ability to then monetize online efforts is still in its infancy.

The usual suspects — Facebook (), Twitter (), Foursquare () — have already proven to be great ways to engage with an audience and promote a brand, but what are the next steps in using these social networks to earn real money for your small business?

Soothsaying necessarily has its limitations. In order to peer into the future of small businesses and social media we took a step back and tried to build cases based on the evolution of trends and some successful examples. Below, find some key ways that your business can develop those ideas to (hopefully) earn some good old-fashioned cash.

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New Platforms

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It’s clear that social media will continue to evolve both in its appearance and its offerings. It is unclear, however, whether this means that our beloved Facebook and its ilk, will be replaced by entirely new platforms, or whether it will become more robust as it’s used for more complex actions.

“I have a hard time seeing Facebook ever going away,” said Scott Scheper, an entrepreneur and VP of Strategic Partnerships at Yontoo. Rather than e-mail blasts or bursts of self-promotion, Scheper suggests that small businesses try to create added value. “… Something that people have a lot of fun doing that you can put your brand into subtly. It’s kind of like product placement and getting eyeballs on [your brand] without having a stand-out ad.”

The idea is more about viral than Madison Avenue: Create content that is attached to your brand that would naturally get shared online. Scheper also pointed to the cost-per-share model as touted by Ad.ly’s in-stream advertising.

In-stream advertising has been gaining popularity as a way to leverage social networks to better target buyers. “You have a pipeline into somebody’s brain, almost,” said Andrew Nusca, a writer for tech and business site ZDNet.com. That pipeline is also an important way to gain information. He said networks like Facebook and LinkedIn () would become even more important for the huge amount of data they index. “This is a data game, this is a war over data,” Nusca said. “That LinkedIn knows your work history, that Facebok knows what you like or don’t like… That’s why they changed those pages, because they can look it up. They’re tags.”

We’ll have to wait to see whether the data giants of today or the new platforms of tomorrow will win out among small businesses.

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Capitalizing on It

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With all this data available, the trick will be for small businesses to find their ideal audience and market strategically. Loudspeaker networks like Twitter are invaluable for broadcasting, but they retain very little personal information.

Small businesses by definition have smaller budgets and must watch their dollars more closely, explained Mike Svatek, Chief Product Officer of social commerce consultancy bazaarvoice.com. “If you can see ROI [“Return on Investment”], it’s much easier to keep pouring money into it.” Svatek said MotoSport, one of their clients, saw a 21% increase in conversion when their mailings included user-generated content and product reviews.

Facebook will have to deal with more businesses as they become better at marketing online. “I think as marketing and advertising gets savvier about how to use social platforms, they’re going to start putting demands on the Facebook platforms and Twitter platforms [to provide more feedback and services].” Still, Svatek sees advertising on Facebook or Twitter as a way for business to ultimately drive customers back to their home sites.

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New Ways of Thinking

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http://www.youtube.com/v/a-_xa_m7MXU&hl=en_US&fs=1

Any innovation in monetizing social media will be limited by the ability of analytics to keep up. Analytics and metrics will need to be just as advanced as the ads they monitor in order to truly change the way small businesses can approach marketing. This is partly why all three of our biz experts believe traditional banner ads will always be a part of monetizing social media.

“There are so many solutions and services built for tracking those ad sites,” Scheper said. “If I’m published and I want to show ads in a new format, I’m going to have to call up a huge agency and now I’m asking them to work harder and ask them to step away from their typical routine… it’s a little bit of a tougher sell.” For Scheper, there is a disconnect between the creativity of recent social media-related ads — from Old Spice’s viral videos to small business Facebook apps or Foursquare promotions — and the analytics designed to measure them.

“I don’t think that banner ads and traditional advertising models will go away,” Svatek said. “I do think advertising is a function of its medium.” Banner ads might be around forever, but their basic function will change. Svatek gave the example of a highway billboard by the side of the road. Because of the limited time a driver has to interact with the sign, the ad has large, bright pictures and just a few words. Online ads are based around creativity and interaction. The user is expected to click through and gain added value, much like Apple’s new iAd advertising platform.

Businesses that can tailor their efforts to focus on interaction and appeal to their users’ unique contexts will be the most effective in converting social media into money. Much of that interaction might come from your own friends. “We know throughout history that word of mouth is the most powerful way to get someone to perk up and take action,” Svatek said. In-stream advertising, news feeds from Facebook, and user-generated content are all ways for a business to monetize a customer’s interaction with both their friends and the brand.

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Directly Monetizing Your Efforts

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While we can dream of a time when the hours spent updating an online profile will directly translate into money for small business, “the most immediate opportunity for anyone, big or small, right now is to drive the traffic back to a website,” Svatek said. One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is not leveraging the content they’ve already created. Svatek saw missed opportunities where small businesses could repurpose traditional content for use on their social networks.

All of this, however, depends on approaching social media with a concrete goal. Scheper suggested small monthly steps like getting one sale via Twitter or converting one user per month via Facebook. While businesses shouldn’t invest a huge amount of time joining every new network they see, it can be useful to secure your handle or company name on startup sites with promise. You don’t want to be late to the game and find out that your preferred username or vanity URL has already been taken.

While Nusca said it could be possible to translate social media into real cash for small business, he believes that social networks are really just platforms. “It’s a conduit, it’s a pipeline,” Nusca said. “Twitter would have to bend to the will of every company that tried to make money off of it. I don’t think it’s possible for the platform to expand that way.” Small businesses will have to continue using these networks as mouthpieces for their brands and as platforms to build customer relationships — the development will be better-targeted ads and more effective outreach.

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Potential for Growth

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So which of all the popular networks is the best one to put your money on? Which should you devote the most time to now in order to best reap the rewards later? Unfortunately we don’t have one answer, but we did get some insights depending on the kind of company you are. “I would say Facebook or LinkedIn,” Nusca said. “It depends on the business you’re in… It’s because they are both tied to real people — you are you. And they have real data.” Nusca sees the value in obtaining information on individual, identifiable customers. Business sites might benefit more from LinkedIn’s emphasis on work data whereas Facebook is better for getting information about personal tastes and pop culture.

Scheper thought Foursquare had the most potential for its emphasis on geo-location and its focus on businesses and real places. Still, he acknowledged that Twitter is the best site to get content to go viral whereas Facebook is most effective at building and maintaining long-term consumer relationships.

Geo-location was a key area for Svatek who saw the future of social media and small business hinging on mobile. “The nice thing about a mobile device is, mobile is inherently social,” Svatek said. Consumers think of phones as ways to connect to friends. They’re also becoming a quick and easy way to spread mobile commerce. The (sometimes strange) success of ring tones and other micro-transactions could easily be applied to small business purchases or perks.

Svatek also stressed the importance of search engines like good ol’ Google (). Google is still the biggest router of information on the web. With phones, most people find information by typing in searches on the go. A well-optimized site can show up high on search engine results — a fact made all the more important when considering how many fewer results pop up on a mobile screen. Svatek gave the example of Swanson Health Products, another client. They implemented a technique that allowed all of their user-generated content to be indexed by Google. As a result, they saw a 163% lift in traffic and a 67% increase in keyword diversity from inbound traffic. Not only did their numbers improve, but they were attracting new customers from a more diverse range of search results.

Regardless of how large or small your business may be, the future of social media monetization is far from certain. We’ll continue to keep an eye on trends and small business resources to help you make sense of the future of social media.

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Series supported by Gist

So you paid attention to what everyone is saying and you created a Facebook () Page for your business. You’ve got your press release links, photos and videos … but no one seems to care. What are you supposed to do now?

You’re on the right track, so congratulate yourself. A lot of small business owners don’t even bother to create a page — they’re simply not “on” Facebook.

But it’s all about where your customers and future customers hang out. And with people spending more than 700 billion minutes per month on this social networking site, it seems pretty apparent that your business needs to be hanging out there too.

Let’s review your Page. Go ahead, pull it up. Your Facebook Page should contain all or most of these:

• Links to your blog posts
• Links to related articles (whether they’re yours or not)
• Videos
• Photos
• Discussions

This type of content is key in getting people to “Like” your page, and contributes to its overall success. And how do we define success? By getting people to interact and leave comments on your Facebook Page, as well as travel from the page to your company’s website and, of course, buying your product.

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Facebook Pages Need Attention

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If you neglect your Facebook Pages, they will die. If you use Facebook, you’ve probably stumbled upon a company’s page with no conversations going on and no recent posts. I’m guessing you didn’t click “Like” on that page. An unattended Facebook Page leaves a negative impression of the company — don’t let yours fall by the wayside.

The more you pay attention to your Page, the more positive results you’ll see. Cathy Nguyen, President of LeatherandBags.com, has seen great results from her Facebook Page, but admits she could do more.

“Although I have a Facebook Page, I’m not utilizing it to its fullest potential because of time. I try to update when I can and should probably try to engage more often,” said Nguyen. “Utilizing Twitter, blogs and e-mails has worked, but then again, I’m not doing it frequently.”

People are used to passive marketing. In the old days, you could pay a magazine or billboard company to create an ad for you. Then you sat back and waited for sales to hopefully pour in. But those days are gone. Whether it’s you or someone else at your company, you need to dedicate someone to social media strategy.

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Creating a Facebook Strategy

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Maybe we put the cart before the horse in creating the Page without a clear-cut plan. That’s OK. Let’s develop a plan together. First, decide why you want a Facebook Page. Is it because everyone else is doing it? Or because you understand the value in connecting with customers who spend time socializing on Facebook?

Write down five goals for your Facebook Page. They might be:

• Create awareness of our brand on Facebook
• Get 10,000 “Likes” by year-end
• Have at least 5 comments or shared items each week
• Make Facebook one of the top 3 referrers of traffic to our site
• Get 2,000 entries to our Facebook contest

Once you have these goals, break down the tasks required to achieve them. If you want 10,000 people to click “Like” on your page, you’re going to have to expand your contacts through your profile. Post your page link on Twitter (), your blog, your e-mail and everywhere else. If you want interaction, you need to post insightful and thought-provoking questions and comments. Decide how regularly you need to post (I suggest at least 3 days a week).

Now determine who will handle these tasks. It might be one person or several. If it’s you, post the tasks to your calendar so you don’t forget to do them. In time, updating your Page will become second nature.

Ginger Anderson, who handles the Facebook Page for Scripps Health in San Diego says that when she started handling the page, all it did was push health news. Now the Page offers a mix of news, useful articles and videos that frequently get comments and questions from the 900 plus San Diegans who follow the brand.

“Our intention is to build relationships within the San Diego community (specifically with current patients and employees) and position Scripps as a trusted leader in healthcare,” said Anderson. “We receive the most comments on the posts that are general and applicable to a wider audience as opposed to disease-specific. We try to balance serious health news with fun, general health and wellness related content along with stuff about San Diego life (again, making sure it’s not always about us).”

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Practical Tips

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Just updating your Page won’t make it fabulous — that will take a little work from you. Here are a few tips to make your page more searchable and appealing.

• Title: Some say the title is the most important part, so make sure your title is descriptive of your business and unique on Facebook.
• FBML: Facebook Markup Language helps you create a custom landing page for your Facebook presence. If you want to promote a special event or direct attention to a particular product, this is a great way to do it. Don’t run screaming when I say that this code can make your page better. It’s not complicated, but if you don’t want to deal with it, hire someone to help.
• Photos and Videos: Don’t underestimate the power of photos and videos. Even if you don’t sell products, you can still add photos to spice up your page. If you’re a dog groomer, take “Before and After” photos of those precious pet makeovers. A realtor can add photos of the houses on the market. A services firm can post pictures from the office to help visitors feel more connected to the staff.

  For videos, why not shoot a tutorial on getting the most out of your products? An office tour? There are applications you can install within Facebook that will let you pull photos from places like Flickr (). This can save you the trouble of uploading them in two places.

• Questions: The jury’s still out on Facebook Questions, a recent addition to the site. But by asking questions through your Page, you can start discussions that will spread beyond just the people who follow your business.

Once you’ve put together your strategy and have worked on it a bit, give it three months. Then analyze your results and decide: Is Facebook helping your business?

by Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an Internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.

To keep up with ever-changing advertising and marketing options, ad agencies are rapidly adopting new strategies and outlooks on how consumers interact with brands. While many ad agencies have been slow to adopt social media, others have been keeping up with the trends quite well.

But keeping up with change is never good enough in this industry; the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve. It’s not enough to hitch your star to an existing facet of viral content; you have to create the content yourself. And you can’t wait for mass markets to catch up to new technologies before you begin thinking about how to incorporate new tech into campaigns and creative; you need to test how that tech will work now. Mobile and social ads are no longer new; what’s more interesting now is figuring out how brands can integrate creatively and effectively with location apps and casual games.

We talked with five people who are familiar with the connected worlds of digital media and ad agencies, and here’s what they had to say about the future of social media and advertising.
Software Is the New Medium

Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA, an agency well-regarded for its digital and interactive work, a field in which AKQA specializes; you can see some recent examples of that work on the agency’s Facebook page.

He told us in an e-mail recently, “One of the newest forms of media is not media at all, but software and platforms. Increasingly, AKQA is developing applications and marketing platforms that provide greater utility, entertainment and information to our clients’ customers without relying on traditional media channels. One example of this is the Fiat eco:Drive application we created that allows Fiat drivers to monitor their driving skills and fuel efficiency and helps drivers to lower CO² emissions.”

More and more, agencies will be called on to be (or at least have the capacity to behave as) short-order web and mobile dev shops. You’ll need to make sure your creatives have access to skilled hackers and experienced web designers; you might even consider including a few highly technical, very creative engineers in your creative team, not just as part-time or freelance collaborators.
Groups and Friends: The Power of the Hive Mind

If you want to get inside your clients’ customers’ heads, just take a look at what their friends and peers are doing, saying and buying.

We asked David Armano, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, if he thought group or friend buying behavior could be used as a recommendation system for goods and services. His answer was resoundingly affirmative.

“If the numbers behind Groupon’s recent success with The Gap is any indicator, the answer is yes.” For reference, the partnership between the group-buying site and the national retailer completely smashed sales records for both entities with a simple digital coupon.

But group buying is most powerful when combined with sharing across social networks.

“The key,” continued Armano, “is that the group buying activity needs to be be present in your friends’ streams. Combine ‘likes’ with mass purchase behavior, and you’ve got the perfect storm of a signal that says, ‘Your friend got in on the deal, maybe you should too.’”
Transparency Is Still a Long Way Off

Part of the art of selling is the illusion that the company is doing what’s best for the consumer and not for their own bottom line.

We asked Jeremy Toeman, founding partner of San Francisco-based agency Stage Two if he thought online marketing has (or should have) more or less transparency in this regard than traditional marketing.

“This might sound odd,” he began, “but I actually think online marketing has less transparency than traditional does.

“In traditional marketing, your advertising was effectively blatant, from TV/radio/newspaper ad buys to junk mail to billboards on the side of the road. Online companies use tactics like SEO, spam/spam-blogs, pop-ups, text-link-ads, fake viral videos, etc.”

Steve Hall, creator and editor of industry blog Adrants, wrote in 2008 that most of the “viral” videos then (particularly the “guys backflip into jeans” clip that ended up being part of a Levi’s campaign) were, in fact, advertisements. And earlier this year, another tattoo-related fake viral video was discovered to be a marketing gimmick from Ray Ban. Fake virility isn’t limited to YouTube (YouTube); often, we find commercial entities trying to “push” supposedly non-commercial content on platforms such as Digg (Digg), Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter).

Of course, consumers don’t figure it out… until they do. And they’re getting more savvy about fake transparency all the time.

Toeman believes brands and agencies should strive for more genuine methods of bringing an advertising message to consumers. “Personally,” he said, “I’d nix all the ‘hide the fact that this is an ad’ tactics completely and eliminate the methods of gaming systems.”

If you need more convincing that labeling ads as ads might be a good thing, consider Old Spice’s recent campaign. Pure creativity and Internet (Internet)-culture awareness drove a YouTube campaign that was very clearly advertising; still, the company’s sales doubled as a result of the YouTube clips.
Location Campaigns Are the New Targeting Mechanism

In the past couple weeks, Foursquare took over Times Square and Facebook launched Places. Clearly, location-based services and related ad campaigns are going to become huge very shortly.

“We’re right at the beginning of an exciting time for the development of location-based services and marketing that integrates geo-location into advertising and applications,” said Bedecarré. “Recent announcements by Facebook and Google (Google) reflect the importance of location services.”

Hall says location-based marketing “will change everything.” He explained:

“With the ability to target people only when they are within purchasing distance, brands will be able to come that much closer to targeting nirvana. Offers can be made only to those meeting certain location (and even demographic) requirements, reducing waste and actually saving a brand a lot of money by minimizing its old school spray-and-pray mass marketing techniques. In a nutshell, mobile will, once and for all, make it possible for a marketer to target without waste.”

Getting your clients thinking now about how to integrate location and checkins into a campaign is key. While we can’t yet construct fully formed campaigns around Facebook Places, there are a slew of other services you can use as case studies for an at-scale campaign.

Starbucks, which does an excellent job in the social media advertising and marketing category, has seen good results from a recent Foursquare (Foursquare) campaign, as have many other brands. And they were right to jump on the bandwagon early. Between the intelligence you can gather about your clients’ customers and your ability to find more highly qualified targets than ever before, location is indeed the holy grail for advertisers.
Display Ads Are Evolving

Jesse Thomas runs one of the most forward-thinking creative agencies around, but he’s not ready to pick out a headstone for display ads just yet. However, he did tell us that “the usual suspects” of banner ads and skyscrapers are definitely undergoing a change.

“Facebook’s ads have singlehandedly made ads social,” he wrote to us in an e-mail. “The idea of ‘liking’ an ad is genius… The idea of advertising a Page in Facebook via the Facebook ad engine and being able to access special advertising powers is nothing short of revolutionary. In a world of [expletive] Google text ads, Facebook’s social ads are a breath of fresh air. But we have a long way to go!”

And not all of Google’s ad-buy offerings are as excremental as Thomas thinks the text ads can be. “Google offered the ability to integrate the Facebook checkout (one-click purchase) option to their ads, and that was awesome at the time. You will see more of this in the future: Making ads better by integrating features from other parts of the platform that are no longer cool anymore.”

In other words, display can still be part of your ad buys and collateral, but you have to think creatively, target carefully, measure thoroughly and react accordingly. Use all the tools at your disposal to do so.
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Jolie O’Dell