social media portland

Company: Paul Frank

Social Media Team: Danielle Hoole, Director of Operations, Bonfire Social Media; Ryan Lewis, President, Bonfire Social Media

Campaign Length: One year, January 2011-December 2011

The Challenge

Paul Frank began in a California garage in the 1990s, where wallets adorned with a monkey named Julius were sewn made from Naugahyde, a vinyl that is more commonly associated with mid-century automobile seats. Almost instantly the brand gained a committed fan base. SoCal surfers and skaters latched on to Julius, purchasing Paul Frank gear and blazoning Julius’s face across their boards and backpacks. Popularity surged, and the fan base diversified. By 2010 it included hipsters, techies, extreme sports fanatics, and a burgeoning number of international loyalists. Moms and teenagers alike banded behind the brand. Within a decade, Paul Frank had grown from a backyard business into an internationally recognized company.

The Paul Frank marketing department wanted to appeal to a varied client base while highlighting the true identity and spirit of the brand. The company wanted to appeal to a new demographic fan base while retaining the first fans it was founded upon. In 2011, Paul Frank hired Bonfire to build and strengthen its brand through social media. Bonfire set out to increase both fans and fan engagement through appealing content and organic means.

Facebook

Though Paul Frank had an existing Facebook page, its numbers didn’t reflect the company’s popularity, and it wasn’t consistent in efforts to engage its audience. Bonfire immediately developed a trial and error strategy to determine what content resonated with the page’s wide range of fans. The popularity of each post was measured. After tweaking even minute details, analyzing the effect, and testing again, Bonfire eventually amassed a strong collection of posts that would engage and appeal to everyone. “Who is Julius” caricatures of celebrities attracted American fans, while “Where is Julius” images of global landmarks expressed gratitude to international followers. Intermixed in all of this were puzzles and games that reflected the light-hearted, comedic spirit of Paul Frank.

Additionally, Bonfire used Facebook to partner with other marketing endeavors. From promoting stops along the Paul Frank Academy of Awesome Tour to creating numerous contests giveaways, the content of the Paul Frank page rewarded its fans with prizes and real time updates. Fan engagement began to increase exponentially, and more people began to express their love of Paul Frank through its page.

Twitter

Bonfire decided to employ the Paul Frank Twitter handle as a tool primarily to connect more closely with fans. By following people who mentioned the brand and responding to their compliments, questions, and concerns, the handle became a personable face of the company. Strategic tagging of celebrities led to prominent retweets, amassing even more followers and building a stronger community. Through Twitter, Paul Frank could wish followers happy birthday, retweet photos of fans in their gear, and send short uplifting messages—all of which served as expressions of gratitude for its faithful fans.

Facebook Advertising

In addition to the organic growth of the page, Bonfire regularly implemented ad campaigns specifically targeted to help grow the United States fan base. With clear imagery and a call to action, these ads targeted fans of brands, likes, interests, and celebrities that the Paul Frank fan base would identify with. Using a variety of advertising campaigns and a relatively low advertising spend, Bonfire grew the overall fan base.

The Results

After twelve months, Paul Frank had reached millions of people through social media. With tested content and a consistent message that appealed to all demographics, Bonfire helped strengthen the Paul Frank brand without compromising its original identity. Primarily through Recommended pages, Facebook fans increased over 42%, and Twitter followers grew 22,966%.

If you’ve had a Facebook page for one year or more, you’ve probably noticed that getting exposure is much harder than it used to be.

Aside from being massively more crowded than years prior, Facebook’s EdgeRank (the algorithm that determines what an individual sees in their news feed) has become more complicated and specific to the tastes of individuals that it’s nearly impossible to leverage the tool if you don’t have a relevant fan base who loves to interact with and share your content.

Despite the fact that Facebook remains very secretive about their algorithm, Argle Social’s webinar last week provided answers to several key questions for marketers and gave new insight into how we should behave in regards to EdgeRank.

Three Variables That Determine EdgeRank

Facebook’s EdgeRank is determined by three variables: Affinity, Weight, & Time Decay.

1. Affinity is the relationship Facebook thinks you have with a given piece of content, according to actions you have taken in the past. In other words, the more you share, comment, ‘like’, and click on different objects, the higher it will (eventually) appear in your news feed.

2. Weight is the importance Facebook assigns to actions people take and different types of content distributed by people and companies.

Objects (content distributed):

1. Video
2. Photo
3. Link
4. Status (copy w/no video, photo, or link)

“Time decay” refers to how recent or “old” the item is. Simply put, newer items are more likely to appear in the news feed than older items. This is why posting content at times when your audience is logged in to Facebook is crucial in increasing exposure.

EdgeRank Best Practices

More generally, you should consider a few things when thinking about EdgeRank:

1. Give your brand personality. You have to be interesting to get exposure on Facbeook. Everything you put into the news feed must be compelling, entertaining, informative, or nurture the community in some way. Share exclusive content. Include lots of photos and videos. Start your own traditions. You are no longer competing against other advertisers – you are competing against people’s friends, families, dogs & cats. They have personalities, so you must too.

2. Use separate campaigns and contests. Campaigns allow you to determine what content is best and see the big picture of things in a very tactical medium. Run a 3-month campaign (no shorter) to gain new perspectives on different types of content.

3. Include calls to action. Click ‘like’ if you agree. Comment with YOUR favorite color. Share this get well graphic with a friend of yours who is sick. Be careful not to use these too often, but throwing them in every so often can give you a nice boost in interactions. What could be easier than telling them exactly what to do?

4. “Stir the hornet’s nest”, as it was referred to in the webinar. This is my personal favorite and one that can drive massive results. Pinning your fans against each other with borderline controversial content, “bubble” events, and content that pushes their buttons (a little) is one of the best ways to get people talking. Don’t make the mistake of getting political, challenging moral beliefs, or being offensive here – just don’t be afraid to put something out there that people might disagree with.

Now it’s your turn:

What EdgeRank best practices do you have to share?

This post was written by Bonfire’s Chief Strategist, Garrett Ira.

–By Justin Albano, Director of Business Development at Bonfire Social Media–

B2B marketers and business owners often ask me if the benefits of social media only exist in the B2C realm. The answer is a resounding no. The core concepts of social media: establishing your brand as an industry influencer, engaging with your customers, leveraging brand advocates, and nurturing leads along a sales cycle are just as powerful in connecting with companies as they are with consumers. In fact, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not [1], and 57% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn [2]. However, just like any other marketing tools, here are some best practices that will get you started in the right direction.

1) Know Your Objectives

What do you want? More customers? A better relationship with your customers? Both? As a biz dev guy I love “to do lists,” strategies, and most of all accomplishing objectives. Often, companies that I talk with are either focused on driving more leads or improving their brand’s perception and share of voice. Dependent upon your company’s objectives, you need to understand which, or both, of these categories your company falls into. Without defining your objectives, you stand no chance of measuring success or understanding the effect of your actions.

Action Items:

• Start macro and go micro. What do you really want out of your business? Do you want to grow a secure company that can be passed on to your kids? Do you have a quick profitable exit in mind? Start with your vision and let it set the framework for your strategies in every business facet. Then develop your bottom up action items, i.e. what will it actually take to get there?
• Set success metrics and milestones and review your progress regularly, not just at the end of the year.

2) Understand Your Demographics

It may seem obvious, but it never ceases to amaze me how few companies actually understand who their demographic is, what their buying cycle looks like, what motivating factors/events cause them to take action or where they get information on products and services.

Action Items:

• Create customer profiles that allow you to examine your demographics in a more intimate way. For example, Suzie is a mother of two who works full time, loves to play tennis and hike, cares about the environment, and prefers to watch movies rather than TV. Setting up these profiles gives you a great demographic snapshot and helps to focus your marketing efforts.
• Once you understand your demographic’s buying cycle, what info, education or resources can you provide to make their buying decision easier? This is not only important for brand awareness and brand perception, but should be the driving force behind your lead nurturing cycle.
• It is crucial for you to understand your industry’s keyword landscape. Which keywords are your demographic using to search for the products/services you offer or information related to your offering? Which keywords are obtainable? How do you currently rank for those keywords? Google provides some free tools for the Do-it-Yourselfers, but any digital marketing shop should help you build the list and give you the analytic insights that will enable you to make sense of it all.
• Discover which social platforms your demographics are already engaged with and focus your efforts there. Currently, there are over 800 million users on Facebook, 300 million users on Twitter, 116 million users on LinkedIn and only 60 million users on Google+ [3]. If you currently have an email database, run it through some social networks to discover who is already using which networks. This could save you mountains of time in the long run and allow you to target your unique demographics.
• Listen via social networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums, as well as online news sites. Once you know your demographic’s hangouts and keywords, you can listen to social conversations via CMS platforms like HootSuite/TweetDeck and by setting up Google Alerts that monitor articles, blogs and forums that are currently talking about your keywords.

3) Create Value Based Relationships

Social media is not the place for old-school messaging tactics, and the concept of protecting your secret sauce is dead. Company decision makers typically go to your website, not social networks, to learn the benefits of your products or services. Companies and consumers alike are actively searching for value-based content that makes their lives and their buying decisions easier.

Action Items:

• Offer value-based content. If you help companies streamline their processes, don’t just talk about how you do it; offer them free templates or How-To whitepapers that teach them how to be more efficient. Providing this type of value will convert prospects in to fans of your company and customers in to loyal brand advocates.
• Understand the difference between relevant content (e.g. interesting articles, company update s, etc.) and compelling content that provides value and motivates visitors to take action (either by providing contact information or requesting a demo).
• Monitor conversations within social communities, like LinkedIn discussion threads, and offer advice or input wherever possible.
• Don’t be afraid to give away the secret sauce. As we all know, understanding how to do something and actually doing it are two very different things. Some of Bonfire’s best clients are those who tried to do it themselves first and quickly realized that their time and resources are much more effectively spent doing the things that they already excel at rather than learning how to develop custom Facebook tabs, constantly managing social networks, writing blogs or producing webinars.

4) Leverage Your Current Marketing Mix

A common and dangerous myth is that social media replaces traditional and costly marketing channels with free messaging. This is simply not true. Social media is at its best when it is amplifying other marketing efforts or when integrated in to a well thought-out campaign.

Action Items:

• Install social plug-ins throughout your site. These allow visitors to share your content on their preferred social network quickly and with a minimum of effort.
• Utilize landing pages to capture leads and initiate your lead nurturing cycle.
• 59% of B2B purchase decision makers have used their smartphone to research products and services when they are considering purchases [4], so optimize your content and landing pages for the increasing number of mobile users.
• Include QR codes on in-print advertising and articles with compelling calls to action.

This is not rocket science and it’s not revolutionary. Instead, this is a new application of what the heart and soul of American business was when companies took the time to connect with their communities and develop relationships with their customers. As a B2B marketer your audience might be smaller than your B2C counterparts, but that means you can be much more targeted and strategic with your marketing. While a B2C marketer may segment their demographics down to niche communities, you can target specific decision makers within your target companies and develop a value-based relationship that not only nurtures the current sales cycle but also sets a positive framework for a long and supportive business relationship.

—-
Stat Citations
[1] Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010
[2] Source: http://www.hubspot.com/social-media-monitoring-in-10-minutes-ebook/?source=hspd-affiliate-PID-3701805-txt-ad-social-media-10-min-day-ebook-20110819&AID=10933127&PID=3701805&SID=skim1024X498223X8a5f920e568fa93e07c8561649950bf2
[3] Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/b2b-social-media-marketing-statistics-to-ponder-099980
[4] Source: http://socialmediab2b.com/2011/09/b2b-decision-makers-smartphones/#ixzz1jmUIeJul

Google+ may be the company’s newest hope for an increased social media presence, but YouTube, a Google subsidiary, remains a solid platform which is now becoming more social.

The recent updates to YouTube include streamlined channel design and improved back-end analytics. Many social media experts, including Mashable, also talk of the updates making the platform more “Google-like.” Another major feature of the updates is an emphasis on interacting with channel viewers and subscribers.

Outlined below are the most important updates, showing how they can both improve your channel’s views and improve interaction within the YouTube community.

What do YOU think of the new updates? Comment below!

Channel Design Updates

When switching to the new channel design, one of the first things you will notice is the tab design. The Featured tab now allows for greater customization. Whether you have one channel for your small business or you are trying to link multiple channels and dozens of videos, you can pick the right Featured tab template:

The Blogger Perfect for a channel which regularly updates its channel with fresh, focused content.

The Creator A good choice if your company has high-quality videos, but only a small number to display.

The Network If your company has a multiple channels, this template seamlessly ties them together.

The Everything The best choice if you need it all. The template allows for a featured video, featured playlists, and featured Channels.

It is good to note that you can test out the different templates before choosing which one is right for you. Also, the background and other design assets have had only minimal changes, so most assets will only need to be adjusted slightly, rather than completely re-designed.

The new design also has Feed and Videos tabs. The Feed tab is where comments now live, along with recent activity and other featured channels. The Video tab provides an ability to have all of a channel’s videos displayed in an organized way.

Want to learn more? YouTube’s online support documents will guide you through updating your channel.

Analytics and Optimization

YouTube “Insights” already provided a wealth of information for those looking for in-depth analytics on their videos. The recent updates have continued this trend and improved both their ease of use and analytic insight. In particular, engagement reports allow you to learn more about how people are interacting with your channel’s video content.

YouTube video optimization has also improved. While YouTube is rather straightforward when it comes to search optimization, adding description tags is a new feature which can boost the visibility of your content.

Interactivity

Finally, YouTube should not just be viewed as a static library for promotional videos or other content. While your channel can be a great way to store videos that are uploaded to your blog or website, it is also a perfect place to interact with fans. Fan comments will now be housed on separate tab and new features allow for channel owners to communicate more directly with subscribers. By increasing your subscriber count, you can boost the reach of your content and achieve greater virality for videos.

The new design also moves the “Subscribe” button above-the-fold, allowing for greater conversions from visitors to your channel.

Conclusion

These updates show that YouTube seems to be headed in the right direction. While many social media campaigns focus solely on Facebook and Twitter, incorporating an optimized YouTube channel is a wise choice. The platform has the ability to both enhance your existing social media platforms as well as create another avenue to grow, engage, and interact with your community.

Behold: the mighty infographic.

From flowcharts to certain installments of webcomics like Randall Munroe’s xkcd.com, infographics distill data and facts and present them in a way that we can all understand. 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) is impossible to conceptualize, but infographics can show 1,000,000,000 in context and scale, using images and captions, in a way that helps us grasp that knowledge.

We’ve compiled 11 great infographics from 2011, plus two fun bonus graphics, and arranged them by topic. What are your favorites?

Economics

The Science of Salary – Shaun Saunders and salarytutor.com showed us in September the comparison between job satisfaction and salary in various professions, from fast food cooks to surgeons. The most satisfied employees, as it turns out, are firefighters. Where do you fit on that scale?

Money – Randall Munroe’s webcomic XKCD is required reading for any self-respecting geek/nerd. His chart of “money (almost) all of it, where it is, and what it can do” takes an entirely incomprehensible concept and makes it accessible and understandable.

Social Media

The Growth of Social Media – If Facebook were a child, it would be in first grade this year. If it were a country, it would be third largest in the world, behind China and India. This infographic from Search Engine Journal puts the most popular social networking sites, and how they’ve grown over time, into perspective. Which sites do you use regularly?

Major World Events of 2011 and their Impact on Social Media – Flowtown takes us through 2011, from the Arab Spring to Charlie Sheen’s breakdown, and ranks whether or not they mattered, as measured by their impact on networks such as Twitter.

Social Media’s Best Bacon Dishes – Using data from social media ratings, infographicsarchive gives us the low-down on everyone’s favorite dessert of meats: bacon. Have you eaten any of these dishes? Are some of them too out-there for you?

Science and Technology

Radiation – After the 9.0 earthquake hit Japan this spring, people all over the world started worrying about radiation exposure from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Randall Munroe took data about exposure from every day events and compared them to the risk from Fukushima.

The Insanely Great History of Apple – Steve Jobs left an unparalleled legacy in the world of computers. The folks at PopChart labs bring us a complete family tree of Apple’s products, from the Lisa to the iPhone 4S.

Politics

This is Not My Beautiful House – What would Congress look like if it were, proportionately, comprised of the same demographic as the United States? The results might surprise you.

School Cafeteria Food vs. Prison Food – GOOD collaborated with Column Five Media to show us the similarities and differences in cost, content and nutrition of the food fed to prisoners and American public school kids.

Entertainment

The Illustrious Omnibus of Superpowers – Another great piece from the folks at Pop Chart Labs. 300 superheroes and their powers, from Superman and Spider-man to lesser-known heroes like Ant-Man and Matter-Eater Lad. Who’s your favorite superhero? What power would you want to have?

NPR’s Book Flowchart – 60,000 NPR listeners submitted their favorite sci-fi and fantasy book titles, NPR compiled them into a list of 100 must-read books, and SF Signal turned it into a flow chart. An interactive flow chart. It’s endorsed by Neil Gaiman and contains everything from World War Z to The Princess Bride. Are your favorites on that list?

Bonus

Inside a Toddler’s Brain – If you’ve been on Facebook, Pinterest or Tumblr lately, you’ve likely seen this diagram. Not scientific, but so close to the truth as to cause giggles that will make your co-workers wonder what you’re looking at.

The Visible Tom Waits – Again, not scientific, but Jim Lockey brings us a good visual explanation for the cause of Tom’s trademark sound. Do you have a favorite Tom Waits album?

We can’t say this very often, so listen carefully: Facebook just made a significant improvement to their platform for businesses.

We’re not talking about functionality this time, but instead about measurement. Ever since Facebook launched Insights with fan pages a few years ago, it has fallen short in a number of ways. Significant data was missing. Many calculations needed to be completed manually by individuals. The language was confusing.

Enter the new insights. While it still takes a bit of time to understand the terms (clearly they’re trying to reinvent the wheel this time around), the new Insights is much more conclusive and provides more answers to important questions for businesses. Let’s look at each page.

Important Metrics (Overview Page)

Facebook’s new measurement platform is focused primarily in 2 areas: “People Talking About This” (PTAT) and “Reach”. PTAT replaces “Monthly Active Users”, which always seemed to have a fuzzy definition among marketers. Nothing is fuzzy about PTAT, however, as it includes any action that creates a story in the news feed of the fan’s friends. This includes wall posts, likes, comments, shares, mentions, tags, event responses, photo tags, check-ins, & recommendations. Phew!

Reach is a very different metric and a bit more difficult to fully grasp. It refers to any unique person who has been exposed to your page or content on any channel, fan or not, including Facebook advertisements.

You’ll notice the Overview page provides a nice graph of correlations relating to (what they consider) your most important metrics, followed by an analysis of each metric for individual posts.

Questions Answered on the Overview Page:

Within my fan base of x fans, what is the maximum number of people I can possibly reach?

What % of my fan base shares our content with their friends?

Which type of posts draw the greatest number of shares? Which type reaches the most people?

What % of my fans click on my posts?

What effect does post volume have on PTAT and Reach?

What do my fans want to hear from me?

Likes

The Likes page is a bit like the previous Insights – it analyzes demographic information about the people who like your page, with one significant difference: it tells you where your likes came from. This is tremendously  valuable when analyzing where to spend your marketing dollars to maximize fan growth. Does you page grow organically? From referrals & partnerships? Paid search? Fortunately, this is no longer a mystery.

Questions Answered on the Likes Page:

Who are my fans?

Where did my fans come from?

Where do I need to spend my marketing budget next month?

Am I reaching my target audience?

What do I need to focus on to build a more relevant fan base?

Reach

Again, the Reach metric can be a bit misleading. This refers to the number of unique users who were logged into Facebook when your content appeared to them in any given context. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if your reach is 13 million people, that 13 million people viewed your content, retained it, and will buy from you.

Still, the metric is worth mentioning and illustrates what your page can do beyond your fan base.

Questions Answered on the Reach Page:

How many people can I reach with my given fan base?

Which activities result in the greatest reach?

How often were my fans exposed to my content more than once in a given time period?

Does Facebook consider my content as important to my fans?

What other areas of the internet bring traffic to my page?

Which tabs are most popular, both in terms of views and fan conversions?

Do I need to invest in additional Facebook tabs? Should I remove any?

Talking About This

This page is likely the most important of the 3 subpages as it offers powerful information. When someone mentions your page to their friends, it’s the closest digital equivalent to word-of-mouth marketing we have – one of the most credible ways to spread your message online.

In addition to providing demographic information about the people who share your content, it also includes a handy graph of the viral reach. This is the number of additional people who potentially viewed your content because they are friends of your fans.

Questions Answered on the Talking About This Page

Which demographic cares enough about what I’m saying to share it?

How do people share my content? (tags, share posts, etc.)

When 1 person interacts with me, how many additional people potentially see my content?

As you can see, we can finally say that Facebook has done something right when it comes to tracking relevant metrics. While these new metrics can be a bit intimidating, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get people talking about our clients. :)

Human behavior is very interesting to me. I have always loved anthropology, history, psychology and sociology. I think this is what has historically drawn me to marketing. Marketing is the science of human behavior as it relates to consumerism and recently the concentration has gotten very complex.

I have tried to build a evolutionary model of the changes businesses are facing today. My focus of this post is on consumer packaged goods (CPG) as it provides the greatest statistical evidence of change.

1900-1990 (The Good Old Days)

Oh the good old days of marketing. Media channels were limited and the pesky internet didn’t disrupt pricing like it does today. The purchase journey was simple because there were not very many options. Consumers typically learned about products through a handful of media channels or talking with friends and family. Marketing could be much more effective, but cost significantly more for the marketer. Marketers also received significant help from the media channels through turnkey solutions. Marketers didn’t need to know every aspect of advertising, because ultimately they didn’t have control of message distribution. Marketers could focus on their product and let the media companies handle the distribution. Marketing wasn’t simple, but it sure was easier for the marketer at times.

2000-2010 (The Internet)

Then there was the Internet. Now everyone is a media source. All you need is a computer, compelling content and internet access. I believe the internet is the single most disruptive medium to ever happen. Consumers now had options. With options came a longer purchase journey because consumers wanted to shop for the best deal. With the internet, they now had the ultimate shopping tool. Other rings to the journey were also added such as digital awareness advertising, online reviews and emerchants. This created a huge problem for both traditional media and marketers, because the message was being diluted and product pricing was becoming transparent. The strongest chance for conversion was still the physical store, but the journey to even reach the store was becoming longer. The only thing emerchants needed was trust from the consumer and a savvy shopper to capitalize on large conversions.

2011 (Social/Mobile)

Where getting consumers to your store was once the biggest challenge, now keeping them there is proving very difficult. Consumers now have smart phones for scanning products to receive price comparisons and reviews. Sometimes consumers will only come to the store to “demo” the product by physically investigating its merits, but then leave without buying and immediately purchase the product from a low-price emerchant. Social media also plays a heavy role in determining purchase decisions do to the easy of online feedback. Consumers are leveraging their friends and family through Facebook and Twitter to determine their next purchase. This is defining the way a new generation shops and buys products. Black Friday is the largest shopping day of the year, but many of the purchases are happening online and cyber Monday is making serious growth strides.

Conclusion

If I could make a few concluding points for marketers and merchants it would be this:

“Google+ skyrocketed to 40 million users in 2 months. It’s the Facebook killer.

I get more comments on Google+. It’s just, so much cleaner than Facebook.”

If you’re like me, you’ve read dozens, if not hundreds, of these type of statements over the last 4 months. Worse yet, step away and do a Google search for “Is Facebook Dead?”. You would think the platform disappeared overnight. People are actually starting to make these type of claims.

My intention here is not to bag on Google’s new and much-hyped platform. In fact, I love how clean and intuitive Google+ is; you don’t have advertisements, you don’t feel bombarded with messages and it isn’t inundated with spam as many other platforms are.

The issue I have is that we are running real businesses here. “Shiny Object Syndrome” isn’t allowed. Being cool and new is not enough and we can’t just bank on potential or assumptions. We have to look at the actual data or we could find ourselves investing our dollars in the wrong places and doing a serious disservice to our clients.

In MarketingChart’s latest set of social media data, we discover that Facebook is still far and away the most popular social network, both in terms of users and time spent.

As you can see, it’s not just that Facebook has 800 million users. People spend infinitely more time on the platform compared to all other web brands. When this is narrowed down ONLY to social networks, the differences are even more astonishing:

When we look at this broadly, it’s basically Facebook and everybody else. As we see “Like us On Facebook” right next to “Follow us on Twitter” everywhere we go, we often forget that a very high percentage of Twitter users don’t check back regularly despite having hundreds of millions of “users”. This isn’t the case with Facebook. Ironically, the number of active users is likely the reason people spend so much time on Facebook. You’ll probably find co-workers on LinkedIn, people who watch the same sports teams as you on Twitter, and people who share the same TV interests on YouTube. But you’ll find everyone on Facebook. Everyone.

And it doesn’t stop there. Although the market for new Facebook users has shrunk to the point where growth is nearly impossible, Facebook is still climbing in overall market share:

But let’s go back to Google+ for a brief moment. In terms of market share of visits, the platform has an extremely long way to go:

I hate to say the M-word, but it’s worth mentioning that MySpace still has them beat.

So what can we take away here? Does this mean Google+ is a dud? No. Does this mean you should re-invest everything into Facebook? Of course not.

The bottom line is, speculation is just speculation. Certainly there is reason to believe Google+ will be a big player at some point. But now? Unless you’re targeting a narrow group of early-adopters, it’s just another social network. It’s cleaner and easy to use, yes, but it doesn’t do anything Facebook can’t at this point and chances are your customers are not using it.

Everyone loves a giant killer and we’ve seen massive platforms fall in the past (tempting to use the M-word again here). Just remember to keep your focus on real data, avoid the hype, and focus your efforts where your customers actually are.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting on a very interesting panel regarding the Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT. ZMOT is a concept developed by Google that attempts to identify exactly when consumers are making purchase decisions. It’s an extremely compelling topic and I would argue ZMOT is just the beginning in an overall shift in purchase decision paths. I could go on trying to explain ZMOT, but it’s easier to watch it in action. Below is the panel discussion and also a video from Google.

ZMOT Panel

The education industry is engaging in an interesting debate between those who champion social media as a tool for students to take learning to a new level and those who attempt to keep it out of the classroom altogether. Many feel there’s no place for Facebook and Twitter in the classroom and the industry has been reticent to fully embrace the medium.

Facebook has made serious efforts to try and ensure they reach out to parents and the education community, addressing concerns regarding the use of the platform by children and teens. They have created a resource for teachers that answers some common questions such as what to do if you suspect abusive behavior on Facebook, how to hide your personal Facebook profile from your students and how to report underage users. Facebook requires all users be at least 13 years old.

All of this drama within the education field has made some industry leaders slow to adopt social media campaigns. The sad truth is that taking Facebook out of the equation ISN’T an option. Teachers, your students are on Facebook and you can either see that as an obstacle or embrace the platform as a new way to reach your students.

There ARE some big players making quite a splash on Facebook, so let’s take a look at what we can learn from the top Facebook pages in education. These pages aren’t directly dealing with the complex issues outlined above, but they are targeting and engaging parents and students quite successfully. I would ask any teachers out there that have good examples of how Facebook is being used to connect with students, PLEASE comment and share with readers below. continue