AIDEA Digital

AIDEA Digital is a boutique Marketing Strategy Consulting focused on online marketing strategy for your success. We excel in: Digital Marketing Strategy Brand Management Strategy Traditional Marketing Integration Website Strategy Website Development Social Media E-mail Marketing Video Promotions Web Analytics Lead Generation Landing Pages for Campaigns Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Marketing (SEM) e-Commerce Facebook Ads and Banner Ads Advertising Copywriting Graphic Design

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5 Ways Small Businesses Can Leverage LinkedIn’s New Features

 1. Stay Top-of-Mind

Posting once a day, and syndicating that post to your business’ Twitter and Facebook accounts, can help you remain fresh in the minds of your connections and customers. As long as the content is relevant and valuable, it will be appreciated and reshared. Just remember to not overshare; users will be quickly turned off if their timelines on every network are flooded with updates from you. Space out your LinkedIn shares to maximize their value for your network.

2. Find New Talent

If you’re expanding your team, LinkedIn is one of the largest and fastest-growing resources for finding the perfect candidate. Particularly in this economy, letting the world know that you’re hiring is some of the most valuable information you can send out on the wire. Write a brand-appropriate blog post giving very specific details on the kind of person you’re looking for. Give your post a simple, sharable headline that contains the company name and position available… and try to avoid use of the term “ninja” if at all possible. When you’re sharing this link, be absolutely sure to include a call to action for every connection to pass this information on to others. For more tips on using LinkedIn to find rockstar employees, check out this article.

3. Crowdsource Solutions and Get Feedback

If you’ve got ideas you want to run by your peers or a nagging business problem that needs a solution, LinkedIn groups and Q&A are popular and effective ways to get feedback. But sharing allows you to cross-post your query across multiple networks and add supporting data such as a picture or website link. One of the best aspects of using LinkedIn for soliciting feedback is that the comments from your professional network will all be collected in a single thread in your LinkedIn profile.

4. Promote Special Events You Host or Attend

Whether you’re going to a charity dinner or hosting a meetup for your clients, a string of well-timed LinkedIn shares can be great for raising community awareness, driving participation or soliciting volunteers or donations. This is another circumstance where it’s completely acceptable to ask others to reshare the content across their own networks, particularly if it’s a local event geared toward your own community.

5. Lead Local and Industry Thought

If you’ve got an article in an online publication or a blog post you’re particularly proud of, LinkedIn sharing can be a great way to broadcast that content to your network — again, both on LinkedIn and elsewhere on the web. Be sure to include a personal comment on why you’re sharing the link, and tailor the excerpt section to include something descriptive and appealing, such as a quotation. Shares on LinkedIn are also a great way to spread news items that are relevant to your peers, vendors and customers.

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  A recent report released by Efficient Frontier (EFF) and Macquarie Capital predicts that paid search from mobile devices (including tablets) will comprise between 16-22%of total ad spend in 2012.

EMarketer also projects that 2012 search ad revenues in the US will reach approximately $17 billion. Given EFF’s projections, this means mobile spending will be $2.7 to $3.7 billion. Tablets account for half of clicks within mobile search, and nearly half of the revenue, while delivering 3 times more conversions.

Google is reaping most of the rewards from the rise in mobile search. According to the EFF study, Google receives roughly 96%of mobile search ad expenditures, while Yahoo/Bing combine for nearly all of the remaining 4%.

EFF’s report also compared average search query lengths of different platforms including: desktops, mobile handsets, and tablets. Desktop searchers tend to use the longest queries, followed by tablets, and then mobile handsets. However, as voice search becomes more popular, it will be interesting to see the changes in mobile search queries.

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Seeking innovation? Look for the intersection of physical and digital worlds.

Take, for example, Tesco supermarkets in South Korea.  The company wanted to increase sales without creating more stores.  Tesco understood that Koreans work long hours and have little appetite for shopping at the end of the day so they created virtual grocery stores at subway stations.  These virtual stores, shelves and all, are projected on the walls of subway stations.  To purchase items, shoppers simply go to a Tesco app on a smartphone and scan the projected items’ QR code.  When purchases are completed, the order is delivered to shoppers’ homes shortly after they get home from work.

The Tesco app was downloaded 400,000 times in one month after the launch and Tesco skyrocketed to number one in online sales in Korea.

(via Saul Berman blog, When trying to find innovation, look for the intersection of the physical and digital worlds — Tech News and Analysis)

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Aidea Digital

Client base

Our clients’ base ranges from high tech, healthcare, industrial supply, arts and entertainment, to consulting businesses with client’s base 80% of Fortune 500 companies, and many more. We’ve worked with all manner of clients from startups to multibillion dollar companies and are great to deliver results on all the consulting budgets.

  What People Are Saying

“We have used a fantastic marketing consultant, Tijana Lehtikoski, who has been helping me transform Out of Hand’s marketing approach. She is very skilled in e-marketing design, analysis, strategy and implementation. She has been an amazing resource for me. Highly recommended.”

Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, Good Value

Adam Fristoe, Co-Artistic Director, Out of Hand

To see more recommendations and reviews visit AideaDigital.com

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The IBM Institute for Business Value surveyed more than 1,100 executives and conducted in-depth interviews with 26 companies worldwide. This study shows how leading companies are integrating social into their strategies to:

Create valued customer experiences

Drive workforce productivity and effectiveness

Accelerate innovation

Read all the results and discover how well organizations are facing the opportunities and challenges.

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A few leading edge companies are able to keep up, but the vast majority of more traditional firms are lagging behind. These companies are working harder than ever, trying to achieve greater efficiencies and predictability. They keep trying to fit new technologies and practices into old business models. This is a holdover strategy that worked well in the relatively stable business environments of the industrial economy but falls short in our fast changing digital economy, where new products, business models and competitors keep emerging from all corners of the worlds.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Puzzling Technology Adoption Discrepancy Between Individuals and Institutions (via ibmsocialbiz)

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Seeking innovation? Look for the intersection of physical and digital worlds.

Take, for example, Tesco supermarkets in South Korea.  The company wanted to increase sales without creating more stores.  Tesco understood that Koreans work long hours and have little appetite for shopping at the end of the day so they created virtual grocery stores at subway stations.  These virtual stores, shelves and all, are projected on the walls of subway stations.  To purchase items, shoppers simply go to a Tesco app on a smartphone and scan the projected items’ QR code.  When purchases are completed, the order is delivered to shoppers’ homes shortly after they get home from work.

The Tesco app was downloaded 400,000 times in one month after the launch and Tesco skyrocketed to number one in online sales in Korea.

(via Saul Berman blog, When trying to find innovation, look for the intersection of the physical and digital worlds — Tech News and Analysis)

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Runaway innovation is insatiable. It captures the imagination of individuals and empowers customers and employees alike to challenge the status quo — leaving organizations to catch up

CEO insights from the Global C-suite Study 

Reinventing the rules of engagement

This CEO point of view report delves into the perspectives of the 884 CEOs interviewed during the IBM Global C-suite Study. Since 2004, CEOs consistently identified market forces as the biggest driver of change. In 2012, for the first time, CEOs expected technology to exert the strongest influence on their organizations and strategy.

And this year, CEOs again ranked technology first. Believing the impact of emerging technologies on their organizations will be profound, CEOs anticipate three areas for action:

Embrace disruption

Build shared value

Dare to be open

Global C-suite Study: CEO perspective

(via ibmsocialbiz)

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Please Don't Call This `Content'

The video was made by Google India, and the point, of course, is to promote Google Search. But it also reaches a new level of what can be done in the name of "marketing."

It gave me chills. I showed it to my wife. She ended up in tears. Read the thousands of comments under the video on YouTube — same thing. Tears.

Why? Because it’s beautiful, and honest, and true. The photography is spectacular. (Look at the shots of Lahore.) The music is perfect. The acting is great. The story is simple, and direct, almost a fable.

There’s an extra level to this story of two long lost friends. The Partition of India was a painful episode in the history of India and Pakistan, one that led to “one of the greatest forced migrations in human history,” according to International Business Times. The grandfather in this film is one of the millions of Hindus and Sikhs who were forced to leave Pakistan and relocate in India.

These aren't just two old friends who haven't seen each other in a long time. This is a parable that touches on some big forces: politics, religion, geography, divisiveness.

In short, this is a pretty powerful piece of filmmaking that just happens to have been created by a big company.

I asked Google about the origins of the video, which was posted Nov. 13, on Google+, Facebook and Twitter. “Our team in India produced the video, and it was inspired by many stories of reunion in that region and around the world, where people use Google to help them connect with people and find information,” a Google spokesperson says via email. It touched a nerve, and within hours, “we’ve seen people re-posting and sharing their own stories using #googlereunion,” the spokesperson says.

Is This Marketing?

Let's look at this as a marketing exercise. What was Google trying to acomplish? The goal, it seems to me, is to put a human face on a big multinational corporation that often seems like a kind of black box to the outside world. Who knows how Google actually works? It’s all secret algorithms thrumming away in equally secret data centers, gathering information about you.

This video is part of an effort to reshape that public image. It shows how Google uses all that information it is gathering — not for some nefarious purpose, but to help people connect with each other. To reunite long-lost friends.

To be sure, Google is also touting its product. The Google product placements are carefully chosen. We see Google search used on a laptop and on mobile devices, for example. We see location searches, word definitions, business listings, airline flight status, a weather forecast.

Lessons

A lot of companies are trying to figure out how to use storytelling as part of their marketing. Very few do it well. There are a few things to be learned:

It’s not short. The rule of thumb has been that videos online should be two minutes or less. But that’s changing. For the right content, people will stick around. I realize that 3:32 is a far cry from a feature film. But it’s also a far cry from a 15-second pre-roll. And it works.

It tells a story. There are real characters. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. There’s a big story contained in a short film. What’s even more amazing is that the story is told in pictures. You can watch the video without any closed captions, and still understand the story and be moved by it. 

Google made it easy to share. Google created the #googlereunion hashtag, and encouraged people to share their own stories of reuniting with friends or relatives. That turned viewers into evangelists.

It’s not about Google, it’s about Google’s customers. Google isn’t showing you the Googleplex, or its cool cafeterias. This isn’t a movie about how awesome it is to work at Google. This is about how people use Google products. That said, however:

The brand is part of the story, front and center. Sometimes companies are afraid to include themselves in their marketing and storytelling. They fear this will put people off. So they end up making videos or telling stories that have nothing to do with their business. They leave their products out entirely. Viewers are left scratching their heads and wondering why this company made this video, or what on earth this video has to do with the company that made it. It’s ridiculous, and worse yet, it feels dishonest.

It’s obvious that this video is promoting Google. But the use of Google is woven into the narrative in a way that feels natural. It’s not intrusive, or forced. It works.

When you’re making a marketing video, your brand has to be in the picture. The trick is to do it in a way that feels true to life. You can — and should — be proud of what you do. If you’re not proud of your product, you shouldn’t be making videos. Heck, you shouldn’t be in business.

The Message

The message of the video is clear: We’re Google, and the work we do is making the world a better place.

There's also a subtle but important subtext, which is that an older generation lived in a world where people were driven apart by religion and ethnicity, but a new generation does not feel bound by those old enmities. Technology transcends borders, both geographical and metaphorical. The two grandchildren are fluent in the language of technology, which their elders do not speak. The two young people use technology to solve a problem, and though they are complete strangers to one another, they work together.

For what it’s worth, Google has been making some other pretty amazing videos lately. Like this one, “Dear Sophie,” which has received nearly 10 million views on YouTube

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Must See: This Google 'Reunion' Video Is Bringing People to Tears

The gist is this: a man in Delhi tells his granddaughter about his childhood friend, Yusuf. He hasn’t seen Yusuf since the Partition of India in 1947, when India and Pakistan became separate countries and the two friends were forced to separate. The man’s granddaughter arranges for the two to meet again.

Most of it isn’t in English, but you can turn on closed captioning.

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How to Deal with Difficult Customers

APRIL 11, 2012 

In sales, we all have to deal with difficult customers. Today, I am going discuss how to deal with difficult customers. In a previous post, I discussed how to get customers to pay on time. Before I can discuss how to handle difficult customers, the situation needs to be put in context. In other words, why were the customers being difficult? Were they being difficult because you screwed up their order or service call? Are they just miserable people? Does the customer constantly cancel their orders? What kind of relationship do you have with this customer? How important is your customer to your bottom line or monthly quota.

Now I know that the first thing you want to do with a nasty customer is to tell them off and fire them. My answer is to resist this urge. You need to remain calm in order to figure out what is causing the customers hostility. If the customer is being hostile because you and your company screwed up, take responsibility and fix the situation. I always did this during my time in outside sales.  If you have a customer who constantly wastes your time having you order items only to cancel these orders, I suggest having a discussion with the customer to try and settle the issue at hand. If this goes nowhere then fire the customer! (Provided they do a small amount of business with you.)

Should you have a customer that is nasty who has a long standing relationship with the company, with you and is crucial to you bottom line/ making your sales quota, I suggest that you suck it up and find a way to keep this customer happy. You do not want to cut your nose to spite you face.

Handling collections can also create difficulty between you and your customer. However, this does not have to be the case. Customers will usually not pay an invoice because of the following reasons: the product you sold them did not work, they lost their invoice, they are having cash flow problems, or the sales rep was too lazy to follow up with the customers. If the product you sold them does not work, fix the issue immediately. If the customer lost their invoice, provide them with another copy and follow up. If the customer is having cash flow problems work out a payment plan. If you are the sales rep follow up. If you’re the sales manager, lean on the rep. Remember to be respectful to the customer. It is important to keep in mind that you want to sell this customer items in the future; not just collect a debt. (I discuss getting customers to pay on time in a previous post.)

Many difficult customers can be managed with great customer service and follow through. However, some cannot be dealt with and need to be fired. Firing customers should be a last resort.

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Blogging is a great way to build your brand and market your products to the masses. Writing a blog allows you to demonstrate your expertise through writing. Blogging helps to provide prospects and customers with valuable information. Providing valuable information helps to position you as an...

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10 Must-Have BlackBerry Apps for Small Business

1. BlackBerry Messenger

My favorite BlackBerry app, bar none, allows unlimited free worldwide text/image chatting with other BBM users. In a small business landscape that’s increasingly decentralized, BlackBerry Messenger allows you to keep up with your partners, connect with clients, organize tasks, and get work done.

Cost: Free

2. Evernote

Ever have that perfect product idea, or new marketing insight, but got stuck without a way to write it down or share it? Evernote helps bring some sense to your world, allowing you to make lists, take notes, share memos, tag pictures, and organize streams of information, all on the move with your BlackBerry. Go innovate with freedom.

Cost: Free

3. Google Sync

Google Calendar and Google Contacts are great ways to keep track of your business network and appointments. However, each application is only truly valuable when it is mobile and up-to-date. The Google Sync BlackBerry app syncs your calendar and contacts between your phone and computer, allowing you to add, modify, or delete items on either device, and access them on-the-go.

Cost: Free

4. WordPress

I’m of the opinion that every small business should have a blog that exhibits who its employees are, what they do, and shares their expertise for free. The BlackBerry WordPress app offers most of what you’d expect in the web version, allowing you to add posts, manage content, and moderate comments.

Cost: Free

5. Skype

Many small businesses, especially those that work internationally, use Skype for video and text communication. Skype is a free, effective, and enjoyable way to interact with partners and clients alike. The Skype BlackBerry app gives users much of the functionality of the desktop version, allowing them to make Skype-to-Skype calls, chat through a wireless connection, and access to their contact list.

The Skype BlackBerry app is available exclusively for Verizon phones. For non-Verizon BlackBerry users, check out iSkoot.

Cost: Free (plus Skype call rates, as applicable)

6. Google Mobile Apps

Google Mobile Apps for BlackBerry includes versions of Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, and more. The apps allow you to receive, edit, and send e-mails and docs, catch up on your subscribed blogs, and make sure you don’t miss any meetings.

Cost: Free

7. Bridge for Highrise

The Bridge BlackBerry app for Highrise by 37 Signals transfers your detailed business contacts, tasks, and e-mail info from desktop to mobile, and vice versa, ensuring you’re never too far from what you need. The app is easy to install for existing Highrise subscribers, and offers full create, edit, and delete capabilities for all standard data.

Cost: Subscription plans, starting at $4.99 per month

8. Tungle.me

Tungle.me enhances your existing calender by syncing it with a public version where you can propose meetings to partners or clients and allow them to book the appointments at pre-approved times. Tungle.me’s customized pages make calenders easy to find, and their BlackBerry app allows you to use most of the features from anywhere.

Cost: Free

9. Do Not Disturb

Sometimes, phone calls bring good news to a small business. Other times, they’re unwanted distractions that interrupt your actual day-to-day operations. The Do Not Disturb BlackBerry app allows you to automatically filter your calls — screening out some numbers while letting others through — without turning off or silencing your phone.

Cost: $3.99

10. IM+

IM+ is an all-in-one instant messaging system that integrates AIM/iChat, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, MySpace, Skype and Facebook chats into one BlackBerry app. With this tool, you can keep up with business partners and stay connected with clients, no matter what system they use.

Cost: $39.99

Conclusion

There are many great BlackBerry apps for small business owners, allowing you to stay in touch, get things done, and move forward. These 10 must-haves serve as a great starting point. Do you use any that are not mentioned here? Leave them in the comments section below.

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5 Useful iPhone Apps for Business Networking

1. Meet People with Happening

The first step in networking is making connections. So, get out there and meet people!

Happening ($1.99) allows you to find nearby events and RSVP from the comfort of your iPhone. You can also browse your friends’ events and view your own upcoming events. The app relies on Yahoo! Upcoming, a social events calendar system, to supply nearby event data.

2. Exchange Information using LinkedIn

These days, there are so many ways to exchange contact information. Some people prefer traditional business cards, while others enjoy the geek chicness of bumping, handing out QR codes, or tweeting their business cards. In the world of fragmented information exchange, there is one business standard that we may be able to rely on: LinkedIn.

The free iPhone app gives you the power to connect with over 60 million professionals worldwide. My favorite feature is the ability to connect instantly with nearby users by enabling Bluetooth within the “In Person” feature. You can also set your status, invite contacts, accept invitations, read and respond to messages and keep up with your contacts’ updates.

3. Meet in the Middle using MeetMe

There’s nothing more annoying than emailing back and forth with a colleague to try to figure out where to meet up for coffee, lunch or drinks. For these situations, there’s MeetMe ($0.99), an app designed to help people meet in the middle. You input two locations (or use your current location and input your colleague’s address) and it locates suitable venues in the middle. The search can be narrowed down by type of venue, and you can store contacts and venues in your favorites for future use. From there, you can email directions to yourself and your colleague. The only thing left to do is meet up and have a good time.

4. Organize Business Cards with WorldCard Mobile

One of the difficulties with staying in touch with business acquaintances is keeping track of their business cards and transferring their information into digital form for easier use. There are a number of products out there to help keep business cards organized on your computer or online, but now these services are going mobile.

WorldCard Mobile ($5.99) is just one of the options out there for mobile business card scanning and storage. After a card is scanned in, the app identifies as much information from the card as possible and stores it in your contacts, where you can edit any scanning errors that may have occurred. If you’re a light-weight user or would like to try out the app before buying it, there is a free Lite version available that has limited exporting capabilities.

Other business card scanner options include Business Card Reader ($5.99) and ScanBizCards ($5.99). The steep pricing on these apps may just be worth it if you’re on the search for a solution to losing or maiming business cards. The only catch is that all of these scanners only work with the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, as the iPhone 3G camera isn’t capable of handling such detailed images.

5. Manage Relationships with Contacts Journal

To make sure you stay in touch with your networks, try a tool like Contacts Journal ($1.99), a contacts relationship management system that helps you keep track of interactions with individuals. Over time, the details of a relationship can start to fade. Contacts Journal allows you to keep detailed notes on all of your interactions (meetings, phone calls, emails, etc.) with each contact and to plan for the future by using the to-do list to add upcoming events to each contact’s log. You can even call, email or SMS from within the app.

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10 Dos and Don’ts for Brands on Twitter

1. Don’t Be a Showoff

Give Twitter users your features and benefits. Let them know about special deals. Don’t post links to your latest press release, promote articles written by your CEO or make extravagant claims. A good rule of thumb to determine whether a tweet is user-friendly or brand vanity is to ask yourself, “If I didn’t work here, would I care about this?” If you’re not sure, ask a brutally honest friend who doesn’t work at your company.

2. Don’t Use Poor Grammar or Spelling

If your replying 2 a user make sure ur social media intern doesnt do it like this LOL!

Seriously, grammar Nazis abound on the web. Write words out in their entirety, don’t use confusing abbreviations or too many of them, make sure punctuation is pristine and try to keep “lolspeak” and emoticons to a minimum.

3. Don’t Get Too Personal

You might be a real person hiding behind your brand’s Twitter account, but depending on the size and nature of the company, this isn’t likely the best place to share your favorite band’s latest track, or compliment a user’s hairdo. Keep your conversations warm but professional; it’s what users expect from a brand ambassador, and anything else comes off as creepy.

4. Don’t Auto-Tweet

It’s OK to set up tweets to roll out while you’re away from your desk, but think long and hard before you automate an entire feed to stream into your Twitter account. Users can smell a bot from miles away, and the point of Twitter is to be personally engaging more than blatantly promotional. Also, this might go without saying for the tech-savvy marketers among us, but don’t automatically DM new followers; it’s seen as spam. And never DM someone your account doesn’t also follow.

5. Don’t Leave Air in the Conversation

If you’re carrying on a series of @replies, don’t wait a day or two between messages. This isn’t the Pony Express; users will want a reply within a few hours. If you wait longer, they may have already forgotten what you were talking about. And be sure to use standard reply mechanisms so the Twitter web interface and other applications will thread the conversation, in case either party needs to reference a previous comment.

6. Don’t Overtweet

If you’re using Twitter as a 24/7, one-way broadcast system, you’re not having a conversation — you might be just “shouting” at your followers. While some brands have successfully maintained one-way, broadcast-only, no-@reply accounts, many opt to engage directly with their followers. Whichever method you choose, make sure you’re not tweeting too often and flooding your followers’ timelines.

7. Do Shout Out to Users Who Mention You

Especially if that mention is favorable, don’t be shy about tweeting thanks, tips or promotions to someone who’s shown your brand some Twitter love. Most of the time, users are surprised and delighted to find a name brand in their stream of replies. Exercise caution, however, when engaging with users who’ve made negative comments. Those conversations can go very well, or they can backfire. Always remain empathetic but professional.

8. Do Monitor Keywords and Competitors

If someone expresses issues with a competitor or poses a general question about your vertical, you should be all over it within a few hours. It’s a great opportunity to win new fans, convert seekers into customers and develop a reputation as a knowledgeable and responsive resource in your industry. Just make sure you keep off-brand replies to a non-creepy modicum.

9. Do Make an Informative Profile

Use your company or brand logo as your avatar, and state the purpose of the account clearly in your description. Your profile’s main link should direct Twitter followers to the most informative, engaging and user-friendly part of your website.

10. Do Fish Where the Fish Are

Let’s be honest: Not every brand needs to be on Twitter. Every brand should be monitoring Twitter — and we’ve written a lot about social media monitoring tools for brands on Mashable — but not every company’s customers are going to be on this site or be open to being contacted this way. If your brand has an older demographic, or if your product is of a more sensitive nature, you might want to be a silent observer of this ecosystem rather than an active participant. 

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What Facebook’s Open Graph Means for Your Business

All the buzz about Facebook’s most recent changes has left marketers scrambling to get a grasp of what these new products and features mean for their business. For marketers, keeping up with the entire social web is a job in itself, and Facebook’s constant evolution doesn’t make it any easier.

To sum up the recent announcements, it is appropriate to simply state that Facebook has moved one step closer to creating the semantic web — that is, a human-powered web — and positioning itself at the center of this new universe.

Facebook’s Open Graph protocol will help cultivate richer and more useful data in an attempt to make “social” the new default of the web. Still, the looming question is: What does this mean for businesses that have invested so much in Facebook marketing? If any of Mark Zuckerberg’s audacious F8 presentations come to fruition, businesses should start optimizing their Facebook presence now more than ever.

What Was Introduced at the F8 Conference?

There were three primary items that were announced at F8 that will work in conjunction with the rest of the web to make it more social:

Social Plugins: Social plugins are the easiest way for anyone to integrate Facebook’s social features on their website. By adding a few lines of code to your site, you will give visitors the ability to engage with both your website and your Facebook presence. The focus is on the “Like button.” Clicking it places content from that web page in your Facebook stream. This differs from the Facebook “share button,” as you now receive updated content from that web page directly in your feed.

Open Graph Protocol: The Open Graph is less of a feature or product and more of the overarching concept of what Facebook is employing. The foundation of the Open Graph protocol lies in having website owners identify their pages as “objects” (examples: a movie on IMDb or an athlete on ESPN.com). This allows Facebook to establish a connection to those objects, optimizing the website’s presence across Facebook and setting up two-way channels between the web pages and Facebook.

Open Graph API: This is the actual API that developers will be working with to integrate websites with the Open Graph. At F8, Facebook’s product team stressed the simplicity of implementing the API, perhaps after seeing the mass adoption of the Twitter API and its ease of use.

Integrating Facebook Into Your Web Presence Will Be Easier

If there was one message that Bret Taylor, Facebook’s Director of Product, wanted to hammer home at F8, it was that the Open Graph protocol will be extremely simple to implement. Any website that has pages representing real-world things can utilize the Open Graph to create a more social experience for visitors.

One of the purposes of the Open Graph protocol is to simplify the sign-in or profile linking process between Facebook and websites. In many instances, logging into the website through Facebook will be unnecessary. If a visitor is logged on to Facebook through their browser, they will still be recognized by that website without any authentication through Facebook Connect. To go a step beyond that, Facebook is adopting OAuth, which will make it easier and safer for users to authenticate their Facebook log-in through third-party websites.

Facebook has also made it easier for developers to incorporate new features on websites. As I stated before, a few lines of code can create dynamic social web integration. This is great news for websites that are looking to avoid the complexities of the Facebook Connect API and to provide a big upgrade from simple Fan Page plugins.

By reducing the cost and time it takes for websites to become a part of the Facebook platform, Facebook has created a win-win proposition for many companies hoping to market on the network. Websites will be able to provide a constant flow of content to the people who “like” what they publish online, while Facebook becomes one of the primary aggregators of social data across the web — not a bad deal.

Community Pages Connect the Web Via Common Interest

You may have noticed that the majority of Facebook’s user profiles have been changed recently. Interests, movies, and other descriptives on a user’s profile page are no longer just inanimate text. Rather, those objects are synced up to Community Pages. This new feature stems from the Open Graph protocol and Facebook’s move to gather the web’s socially generated data.

Community Pages have the ability to organically group people together based on what they like. Whether you clicked “like” on the LeBron James ESPN.com web page, or you have him listed in your interests, you will be connected to the LeBron James Community Page and everyone else who has done the same. Gathering people together based on interest is not a novel idea, but doing so from a pool of over 450 million people means vast amounts of people-powered information.

Since Community Pages are built actively and passively by users, companies need to make sure to monitor pages related to their brand in order to manage their identity within Facebook and the rest of the social web. Marketers who recognize Community Pages as a great place to engage with their enthusiasts will see early benefits. Sparking conversations with these individuals and asking for feedback on your company’s products and services may help shape public opinion of your business and improve sales on the whole.

What Are the Effects on the Current Model?

Since the Open Graph protocol will reshape how the rest of the web is connected with Facebook, what does that mean for the current method of connecting?

The new social plugins offer your website a rich feature set very similar to that of your Facebook Fan Page. But hundreds of millions of people continue to log-in to Facebook every single day. You still need to maintain a strong presence within the site’s walls. Your Fan Pages will remain valuable to your social media marketing efforts, and syncing them to your websites will be a viable option moving forward.

Facebook applications may become an even more intriguing option when it comes to packaging a viral marketing message on Facebook. With access to the new API, developers may find ways to better leverage data and create an even richer social experience.

Facebook Connect is probably the biggest question mark of the bunch, as it seems likely to be thrown by the wayside. With the addition of the Open Graph API and the social plugins, much of what Facebook Connect offers will be obsolete. Still, there are some questions about how exactly developers are supposed to accommodate these changes.

What Should Your Business Do Next?

It’s no secret that Facebook is making a huge push to lock down their top spot on the social totem pole and they hope that the users will follow their lead. In Facebook’s case, it’s safe to say both users and marketers will stay on board. With Facebook’s size and reach, if you are not keeping up with the changes, you are going to be left in the dust.

Businesses will need to build their web presence with the Open Graph in mind. Moving forward, Facebook-enabled websites will become an essential piece of lasting success in the digital space. Content dissemination will occur more often and be more relevant to users, and applications will take on many new forms.

Social optimization is to 2010 as SEO was to 2005. Facebook, along with other important social platforms are now giving you the tools to optimize your social media presence based on the quality of social engagement you create. As Mark Zuckerberg said, the web is defaulting to social. It’s time to act accordingly.

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4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook

A couple of months ago, we talked about ways to engage your fan base on Facebook. Several readers asked how B2B companies could take advantage of the tips we shared, and I know that some organizations are still wondering if it even makes sense to try to reach a business audience on Facebook.

In my view, Facebook presents a unique opportunity to connect with and educate your target market in a way that your website and even your blog can’t match. The trick is coming up with meaningful content that people will want to share, and that brings them back again and again.

Here are some tips for creating a powerful presence on Facebook that will engage a business audience.

1. Become an Industry Resource

Whatever business you’re in, chances are that you’re keeping up with industry news and maybe even writing about it on your blog. You’re likely running educational webinars or speaking at industry conferences. You’re also engaging with customers, helping to solve their business problems and maybe even documenting the process with case studies. This means that you probably already have a large number of resources to share. Why not funnel this content onto Facebook and make your Page the go-to place for insights and information on your particular industry?

A good example of this approach is 360i, an award-winning digital marketing agency. Tapping the deep expertise of its team, 360i keeps its Facebook Page updated with industry insights on topics that matter to the brand marketing audience, such as how businesses are taking advantage of Google Places or new trends with Foursquare.

The 360i team showcases industry research and reviews cool new technologies that marketers can use in their programs. They post a weekly summary of all the important industry news, and provide readers with astute commentary that puts the news into context. In short, they’ve positioned themselves as experts in digital marketing and become a valuable resource for their target audience on Facebook.

2. Engage the Community

In the past, your customers may have had little interaction with each other, and the outside world could only see a list of customers on your website (if you put them there). As a marketer, you wouldn’t know what all your customers were doing with your products, or even how to reach them.

Now, you can use Facebook to engage directly with your customers and make them part of your marketing efforts. For example, you can ask customers to share their successes on your wall and get feedback on new product features. You can encourage them to recognize great service people and reward them for their input with a discount or other promotion. You can also solicit customer references for case studies and media opportunities and find out who’s doing something innovative with your product.

BigCommerce, a company that offers e-commerce shopping cart software, routinely reaches out to its Facebook fan base to identify reference customers and uncover interesting use cases for the media. For example, when the company wanted to promote the success of its recently launched Facebook shopping application, they simply posted a query on their page asking which customers had seen a boost in sales from the application and who would be willing to talk to the media. Within 24 hours, the company had generated fifteen new customer references and were able to immediately turn this information into media coverage.

3. Expand Beyond Your Wall

There are now a host of different applications for Facebook that let you do more than post on your wall. If you’re selling B2B products online, you can set up a shopping tab on your page to drive traffic to your e-commerce site and encourage viral sharing of your products. Get Satisfaction, a popular social CRM and customer support platform, recently launched a Facebook version of its application so your customers can ask questions and get support right on your Facebook Page.

You can also set up a promotions tab using Fan Appz to offer special deals to your Facebook fans and even use these deals to support lead generation programs. For example, if you sell software licenses, you could offer a 20% discount on the annual fee for people who enter the promotion code at an upcoming webinar or bring the coupon to your booth at a conference.

4. Lighten Up

While many of us use Facebook in our day-to-day business, the vast majority are usually there to have fun and engage with friends. So no matter how serious your product is, inject some humor and levity into your page.

For example, if you’re selling enterprise security software, why not do a poll where people rate the most evil tech baddies in films like Hackers and The Terminator? If you’re a marketing agency, you could do a “Which Mad Men Character Are You?” quiz that assigns users an identity based on their answers, which can then be shared with their friends. Just keep it relevant to your industry and safe-for-work.

And even if your website needs to stay “all business,” Facebook is where you can give a face and personality to the company. You could do an “employee of the month” feature on the page where you profile someone who’s making a big difference at the company or who achieved a significant milestone. Include photos or even a short video.

You can highlight what the company or employees are doing in the community or in support of a particular cause, which has the added benefit of putting the weight of your fan base behind these efforts. You can also consider posting behind-the-scenes photos of engineers hard at work on the next product release, or a smiling customer service rep on the phone with a client. All of these ideas will help your fans make a stronger and more personal connection with your company.

These are just a few examples of how companies can use Facebook to engage with B2B customers, and I’m sure there are many more out there. If you’re using Facebook to market to other businesses, I’d love to hear what else has worked for you!