Keeping it simple is about getting the basics right – brands and agencies need to realize this. There is no point in a brand exploding onto the social media scene with a brilliant piece of content, a game or some other large scale custom app without having first got the basics right.

So what are the basics and how does a brand keep it simple?

Simple is fourfold:

-       drip feed and – but not or – burst

-       don’t over complicate

-       stimulate don’t dictate

-       test and learn

Drip feed and – but not or – burst:

Given that social is always on, brands need to ensure that they deliver a constant stream of – and this is the critical element – interactive campaigns, promotions and content. A brand that delivers a social campaign as part of their seasonal or quarterly broader marketing push in isolation of other on-going interactive social activity will briefly grab the attention of the social consumer and as quickly lose it. The underlying and on-going interactive campaigns maintain that attention (not to mention building a brands Edgerank score).

Don’t over complicate:

The more barriers put in the way of the consumers’ social interaction with a brand, the more likely the consumer will disengage. In simple terms, this means that once a brand has defined it’s marketing and business objectives for social – be that data capture, social referred revenue or brand awareness –  every interaction with the consumer should be as frictionless as possible. For example, if the objective is to capture data – ensure it is a simple exchange: in return for this content/opportunity to win etc, all we require is this data. If you want consumers to share your content, make it easy for them to do so by prompting them with a share/invite mechanic. Don’t make the consumer do the hard work. They won’t.

Stimulate don’t dictate:

The most successful brands in social don’t dictate the conversation, they simply stimulate it creating engaged communities of fans and followers. Brands often seem to forget that this isn’t the environment for pushing out messages about their products and services. It’s the environment to stimulate conversation and sharing around subjects related to their brand but of interest to the social consumer. So an online retailer of DVDs and music, for example, doesn’t talk about when the next Bond film is coming out and how they can pre-order but sparks conversation about who should be writing the soundtrack for the film. The difference can be a thousand comments on a post.

Test and learn:

Social marketing offers an almost unparalleled opportunity to test different campaign types, messaging and media strategies. The ability to track a brand’s performance at a granular level from what content drives sharing and inviting, engagement and ultimately purchase to which media is driving the most fan volume and interaction give a brand the perfect testing environment.

An always on, drip feed approach to campaign activity in the social environment means that a brand can be constantly evolving their social marketing strategy to get it right.

So the best thing a brand can do in social is start it with a kiss….not a bad beginning to most relationships!

EngageSciences, the premier social media marketing platform for enterprises is therefore delighted to announce the launch of Pinterest integration into its platform. Brands can now generate Pinterest-style displays of uploaded consumer content on their Facebook page and then pin photos and videos to Pinterest, using hashtags for discovery.

The integration of Pinterest into EngageSciences’ platform will allow clients to reach their consumers in a new, visual way on one of the fastest growing social networks the web has yet seen.  Repinning will drive the spread of campaigns, and deepen engagement through fans to new interest based communities on Pinterest.

And to add a little twist, EngageSciences has introduced Instagram-style filters to enable fans to give their photos or content a different look when they upload content to Facebook campaigns before pinning to Pinterest.

So for brands looking to harness the combined power and opportunity or Facebook and Pinterest, look no further than EngageSciences. The Social Marketing Platform.

For more on the rise of Pinterest – check out this great infographic from the folks at Tamba.

Getting likes is just part of brand marketing or social commerce activation. The top of the funnel if you like for the start of your strategy. Without engagement, the likes become pretty useless. So the question becomes how do we optimise our campaigns for ROI and identify and use advocates to help increase the loyalty of our followers?

The problem marketers have is the stats show us that over 99% of fans don’t engage with a brand they have liked. That signifies a huge failure to drive engagement. At EngageSciences we know that when a customer works on a strategy and plan to engage their fans, not just drive likes, they get really big pay backs in terms of increases in Facebook referred revenue. With 900m people spending more time on Facebook than Google or any other destination on the web it is critical that marketers deploy strategies, tools and programs to engage their fans.

The good news is that there are lots of ways to not just acquire fans, but also engage them. It is also possible to track what that means in terms of an increase in conversions and revenue for many businesses. At it’s heart a change of attitude is required. Social marketing needs to be thought of as a way to bind fans into a more loyal relationship with a brand, that manifests itself in a higher customer lifetime value. EngageSciences customers show between a 25-50% increase in revenue from fans over non fans within the first six months of implementing engagement and loyalty strategies, rather than just fan acquisition tactics.

So next time your CMO shouts at you that you don’t have enough fans on Facebook, ask him or her what she wants to do with those fans? Explore whether the company will support an advocacy program to reward fans that help spread your marketing campaigns to their friends. Ask the question whether your company is currently able to track success and has decided what success looks like – more revenue, higher brand reach and engagement, increase data profiling of fans etc. There is infrastructure in terms of tools, people and processes that are required to really capitalise on the opportunities that social media presents. Too often pressure is put on social media managers to operate tactically, when the real opportunity is strategic.

So why bother? Well putting aside that senior marketers that are doing it right are defining their careers through being adaptive to change and scoring big because of it, there are some basic macro economic headwinds that should give you a common sense view of what is happening at the heart of the web. Facebook will IPO this month for what will likely be over $100 Billion. Yes a $100 Billion. When the dust settles there is likely to be 20-25 billion dollars of cash sitting on the balance sheets of Facebook that they will have to use to define the next era of the social, local, mobile web. This is an unprecedented amount of money. Up till now the Facebook team have operated with pocket money in comparison. There is no question that change will happen at a speed that we have not seen before.

The social graph is already embedded across the web with the proliferation of social plugins. Facebook has become the de facto social login. The building blocks are already in place. Make no mistake the very fabric of the web is changing and changing fast. Socially connected experiences across desktops, tablets and mobile’s are already at the heart of brand marketing. The advent of Smart TV’s will bring a new injection of brand marketing dollars that will need to leverage the social graph. As a digital marketer you need to be on this train.

So join Freshnetworks, EngageSciences and OurSocialTimes for a free webinar series addressing these questions, from the perspective of both the science and the emotion of social media marketing.

Register today here.

The new program brings together the existing Facebook’s PDC and Marketing API Program (MAP) and recognizes companies that have developed technologies in one or more of the following specialty areas: Page management solutions (Pages), ads management solutions (Ads), services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations (Apps), and/or tools for Page Insights analysis (Insights).

Richard Jones, CEO, EngageSciences:

“We’re delighted to have been selected for the Facebook PMD Program – it’s a fantastic reflection of the EngageSciences offering and the icing on the cake of an already phenomenal year. After two years investment, we launched the platform to market in May 2011, and have been bowled over by the demand we’ve experienced from both enterprise clients and agencies with clients in 50 countries. In addition, the recent opening of our New York office has capped a stunning first year for EngageSciences.”

For more information, please contact Tom Huxtable on 0044 7968 257189 or tom@engagesciences.com

EngageSciences has certainly had an amazing year since launching in May 2011. We have had phenomenal growth, serving clients in over 40 countries, which has led to us opening up our US Office this April to service the demand. Great brands such as Stella Artois, Mr Porter.com, More Than, Lindt, Unilever, Peet’s Coffee, Nokia and Rakuten have released great social campaigns and marketing programs on our platform, to critical acclaim, with clients such as Play.com getting nominated for their work with us by eConsultancy in the Award for Social Media Innovation. Clients who deploy EngageSciences have seen fan interaction increase by over 1000% in their first year, seen increases in Facebook referred revenue by over 500% in their first six months of deployment and double their fan base inside three months of implementation.

It has been clear that our singular focus on being the enterprise specialist on social marketing and social campaigns has paid big dividends. Customer support, community management and social marketing campaigns, profiling and advocacy programs are very different initiatives on social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Leading enterprises recognise this and work with companies that can actually drive real world results for their marketing programs that impact the bottom line.

The evolution of digital marketing over the last 15 years has shown us that specialist vendors outperform generalists that try to serve multiple stakeholder departments, across all business sectors, sometimes in both SME’s and enterprise clients. These vendors, usually the first generation players in a new digital channel, become diluted in effectiveness to serve any of their stakeholders, which is quite unsurprising given one size rarely fits all in any context.

EngageSciences success in replacing first generation social media management systems vendors, for social marketing is proof of this in action. ”This year was very rewarding,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “The global economic situation has abated and there are many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products. We had a very difficult time narrowing the pool and selecting the finalists. EngageSciences shows great promise therefore deserves to be among the Finalists. Now we’re faced with the difficult task of selecting the Top 100 winners of Red Herring Europe. We know that the 2012 crop will grow into some amazing companies that are sure to make an impact.”

Finalists for the 2012 edition of the Red Herring 100 Europe award are selected based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. During the several months leading up to the announcement, hundreds of companies in the telecommunications, security, Web 2.0, software, hardware, biotech, mobile and other industries completed their submissions to qualify for the award.

Overall, Timeline allows you to better visually promote your brand and choose the content you’d like to feature.

Summary:

• Preview how your page will look in Timeline for pages
• Set up a Cover Photo
• Create larger App/Tab icons
• Adapt your Custom apps designs to the wider 810px App iframe
• Learn about using Highlighted, Pinned, and larger image focussed posts
• Create Timeline Milestones

The Facts:

• The Wall has effectively become your Timeline.

• The ‘Cover Photo’ is a new image canvas at the top of your page designed to visually tell your brand story. The space for your ‘Cover Photo’ is 850px by 315px. (Effectively half of your page above the fold).

• When users find your brand page by searching through Facebook, you can no longer set a default landing/welcome page. The default landing page will now be Timeline for this sort of search.

• A brand can now control how visually dominant a post is on Timeline through ‘Highlighted’ and ‘Pinned posts’.

• App/Tab Landing Pages are now wider, giving you much more design freedom (810px wide).

• Like Gates are still available on Custom Apps/Tabs (but like the Wall, you can’t Like Gate the Timeline)

Brands can also ‘Pin’ a post to the very top of the Timeline for up to 7 days to promote the most important posts. This can be a great way to highlight custom apps such as competitions, coupons, quizzes and more to both existing fans and non fans a like. The increased visibility of pinned posts should help drive interaction around your campaigns and promotions.

Brands can choose Featured Posts to fill the full width of Timeline. Brands can also order and hide the posts they wish to feature on Timeline to show the most engaging content. This provides a great way for brands to create the story of their brand over time.

The Opportunities:

• The Wall has effectively become your Timeline. You know have control over what is presented on Timeline. Feature your most important posts, campaigns and endorsements. Bring posts to life with much bigger visuals.

• Cover Photo. A great opportunity for brands to visually tell their story. “A visual status update” at the top of your page that can be updated to reflect your latest campaigns or brand positioning.

• Timeline is now the Default Landing Page. Fans and non -fans are presented with Timeline when searching in Facebook for your brand page.  This has been a source of much discussion with brands fearing the loss of control of a custom welcome page and the opportunity to use a Like Gate. However given that a tiny proportion of brand pages are found by search, and the vast majority via the newsfeed and custom links, brands can still direct the vast majority of traffic to their Like Gated custom pages/apps.

• Highlighted and Pinned Posts. Timeline gives brands the opportunity to make certain posts stand-out more than others by enabling brands to create  ‘Highlighted’ and ‘Pinned’ posts. Brands can create full width (843 px wide) ‘Highlighted Posts’ . You can also ‘Pin’ an important post to the top of the timeline for 7 days.

Just to be clear, Like Gates can still be used on Custom Apps/Tabs and still increase a brands fan-base. The only change is that the small minority finding your page via a Facebook search cannot be directed to a Like Gated custom welcome page. Bear in mind, Timeline is a landing page only with the vast majority of your page’s traffic being generated via the newsfeed and custom links. Brands thus have the power to promote links directly to their custom apps/tabs featuring Like Gates. So, a brands ability to drive ‘likes’ remains relatively unimpaired. In fact the fundamentals have not changed at all. A brands success on Facebook is still how it can get stories generated across the platform to engage fans. Facebook has announced this week a number of great new paid media options for achieving this and EngageSciences complements these with all the tools you need to generate earned media results.

Overall, Timeline brings a much richer visual experience and more control to the posts you’d like to promote on Facebook. EngageSciences will be releasing further,  more in-depth updates on how Timeline affect your  brand pages over the next couple of weeks.  Get thinking about your Timeline and the story of your brand…..

For more detail see http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Pages_Product_Guide_022812.pdf

Infographicby MDG Advertising

Marketers have understood for many years that using product reviews on websites helps drives conversions. Technologies like Bazaarvoice have pioneered this area of digital marketing and the results have been impressive. If you can surface up positive product reviews to people that are on your website, then conversion rates go up. It is quite simple.

The great thing for marketers is that social media offers up a whole new capability for companies to use the voices of advocates to positively impact both campaign conversions and brand metrics. People are publishing posts and tweets on Facebook & Twitter, making recommendations on LinkedIN, publishing videos and photos to sites like youtube and flickr about your products and services all the time. The question is most brands don’t know how to tap into that, to find the voices of advocates and then publish those voices into their Facebook Page and website.

Nokia use EngageSciences to easily do this. It can take as little as 15 minutes a week to find and publish fresh advocacy from social channels. On the right is an example of how Nokia France are curating what is being said on the social web and then publishing the voices of those fans into a Facebook offer page to help drive conversions.

Nokia also implement entire tabs that are showcasing nothing but the material published by advocates. The below is a reactions page to the launch of the Lumia phone. It is surfacing up unboxing videos fans have published to youtube, photos uploaded to Flickr, as well as tweets and posts from fans on Facebook and Twitter and third party blogs published about the new phone. Being able to go beyond just understanding what people are saying, which is the standard fare from a social media monitoring platform, to actually being able to use what is being said holds great promise for social marketing. Having a console that allows marketers to monitor, filter, curate and publish the voices of their advocates is a new tool in the digital marketers armoury for driving brand metrics and campaign conversions.

In the vein of looking at how social media can drive commercial results I like this infographic from MR Youth that looks at how social media impacted the holiday season sales. If you are reading this and think you need social media marketing to drive more revenue or to be more transparent in terms of ROI, send tom@engagesciences.com an email for more information.