More importantly, do you need to be? Having a presence on every single social media is not only time consuming, it exhausts valuable resources.  Deciding which networks your brand should be on is now easier, with CMO’s Guide to the social landscape.

From Tumblr to Facebook, the guide is an essential read for brands wanting to better leverage major social media sites. CMO.com has done the research for you, explaining which websites offer the best in customer communication, brand exposure, site traffic and search engine optimization.

For example, did you know that photos properly tagged on Flickr are indexed in search engines and passes links and page rank? Flickr is also a major part of Google’s and Bing’s social search component—increasing search engine rankings organically. Flickr = great SEO.

Or did you know Linkedin doesn’t send as much traffic to your site as Facebook, however, it’s great for brand exposure showing the professional prowess of your organization? Linkedin = not so good traffic to site.

Before diving and creating multiple profiles on every single social site, save time and resources by selecting the best fit for your brand’s goals.  Invoke can help you create a strategy that integrates social engagements across social media channels.

Mitch Joel kicked the morning off with his insights in social media, and the revolution by consumers. His take? Digital integration, and social marketing is here to stay.

• Experts matter: You shouldn’t put a 20 year old intern at the helm of your social marketing department just because they use Facebook a lot. That’s like hiring an electrician whose only experience is turning lights on and off all the time.
• Consumer’s buying habits are changing and impulse buys are happening online, thanks to services like Amazon Prime. New services are providing consumers with information in their hands from people they trust, which drastically effects the buying cycle.
• Don’t focus on how many fans, followers, ect. you have. Focus on who. Influencers and leaders will generate a stronger message.

Bill Taylor’s talk addressed strategy and change in fast moving times. He focused on the value of people and their passion. He focused on:

• We’re living in an age of disruption where originality and values should be used as advocacy. Do you stand for important ideas?
• Game changers think differently. They are the most disruptive — they care more than others. They won’t cut corners or compromise.
• Your brand is your culture.
• Stay interesting, passionate and emotional. Make it (whatever you are working for) more memorable.
• One brain is never as smart as everyone together. It’s the people and the talent that make your brand special.

Avinash Kaushik tackled metrics — what matters, and what doesn’t. He presented with humor and emotion.

• There is no one action that will increase your data, views, etc. by 1,000 per cent. But rather, taking 1,000 actions and increasing things by 1 per cent will make a difference.
• Avoid dumb metrics and measuring irrelevant data like the number of people touched.
• Think about bounce rates. Bounce rate is very important metric. If a bounce rate is high, this is what users are doing: coming, puking, leaving.
• Metrics should value include visitor loyalty, length of time on site, conversion rate, and task completion rate.
• Amplification: does your message cause a ripple? Measures the number of retweets.

Gary Vaynerchuk enthusiastically engaged the audience, running across the stage and hosting a question and answer period. He addressed using new tactics, but not forgetting traditional marketing stomping grounds. Keypoints?

• Content is king but marketing is the queen and she runs the house.
• Social is a left jab. It sets up everything else.
• You’ll never be fired for running a TV ad.
• Don’t fold. Stand up. Don’t play in the middle. Live in 2011.

Guy Kawasaki, founder of All Top, Guy Kawasaki offered 10 ways to enchant customers, employees and bosses. Here are my favourites.

• Achieve trustworthiness: gain knowledge and competence, trust others first and default to a yes attitude.
• Get ready to build the product or service.
• Invoke reciprocation. When you do something for someone, the person will thank you. The correct reply is: I know you would do the same for me.
• Use technology: remove the speed bumps (captia code)
• Enchant up: enchant your boss. Drop everything and get it done. Enchant down: enchant the people who work for you.

For those who were unable to attend be sure to check out tweets with hashtag #TAOM.

Social media is communication 2.0. Leverage your consumer base so that customers become your personal sales team — nothing sells more or increases customer loyalty and engagement better than the voice of other customers. Social media takes word of mouth marketing  into the digital sphere as customers peruse the Internet for twitpics of the best pulled pork sandwich or the latest blog post about an Italian restaurant from a favourite foodie.

If you’re thinking of taking that dive into the social media deep end, here are some reasons you should incorporate social media into your small business strategy.

Customers can be your friends
For years consumers have been fighting a battle against advertisers – we were sick of being sold to from a faceless corporation and want to be treated like humans. Social media allows businesses to do that. Like the corner store your grandpa visited as a little boy or the butcher who knows you by first name, social media allows businesses to invoke a sense of community. Engage your customers in a conversation. Let them see the human side of the business. Leverage the community to gauge interest about new products, keep them up-to-date about events and let them know about specials before the regular public. Talk with, not at.

It’s cheap
Forget about buying that ad space in the newspaper or sending your intern out on the street with a sandwich board. Social media allows businesses to gain exposure for little or no money at all. Create a Facebook page, sign up for a Twitter account, establish a WordPress blog – all free. The only real investment is time. Interacting with your customers on these platforms can put them to work for you. They can spread the word about your great product or service by engaging their own social networks through yours. Ultimately, they help you expand your reach far beyond what you could have done with traditional advertising.

Responsiveness
Take off those rose-coloured glasses. Not everything that your customers say will be positive. It’s up to you as the business owner to respond to everything, even the bad stuff. Be ready to deal constructively with any negative exposure. The key to this is to be participating in and guiding a two-way conversation. Hootsuite is a great way to easily monitor several accounts, as well as understand perceptions and sentiments about your organization or service. Customers appreciate accessibility, transparency, and openness.

Stake out the competition
Staying competitive is the key to success in any industry. Social media can help you improve your knowledge base about your industry and interact with other movers and shakers in your industry. Network with those on the cutting edge and stay ahead of trends by tracking all the buzz within the industry. Stalk Twitter feeds, blogs and Facebook pages. Compile a list of important Twitter users and bloggers in your industry or come up with a list of keywords to track in Google alerts and bring the info to you.

Expound your unique product
While some of us may employ an army of clones, not everyone has the time  to  speak to each and every individual customer that walks in through the door. If you have a unique product that you are passionate about, social media allows you to extend your voice across time and space. Share pictures, videos or behind-the-scene looks that regular consumers would not be able to access anywhere else. Allow your social media platforms to be that unique place to share exclusive content and encourage others to share their own.

Twitter has become one of the most popular and most powerful social media platforms. When used successfully, Twitter can expand the reach of your brand and your organization. By leveraging the social networks of others, companies are taking advantage of Twitter’s marketing potential. Generating a large network of followers is the key to reaching your target audience, but it isn’t as simple as following others and crossing your fingers and hoping that they follow you back.

Here are some tips about ways to get more Twitter followers:

Link it
Generate consistency throughout all your social media channels by providing links to your Twitter profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, your blog and your email signature. People have to know you exist on Twitter before they can even start following you.

Hash it
#Hashtagging keywords ensures other users who are searching up those terms can easily find you. Check out search.twitter.com for trending topics and jump into the conversation. If you attend conferences and events, find out in advance what the hashtag is — this is a great way to network with fellow attendees.

We <3 pix
People are very visual consumers and pictures are heavily retweeted and spread around. If you love eating out, other foodies love to see pictures of what you’re eating, for example. As with links, ow.ly provides a great way to track how many people viewed your photo and how often it was passed along.

Monkey see, monkey do
Follow the top Twitter users in your area and watch what and how they tweet. Pay close attention, not only to the content they send out, but also to the tone of their messages.

Know your niche
Knowing how and where you fit into specific interest groups ensures your tweets are reaching the most relevant target audience. Have a targeted audience in mind and tailor your messages towards its interests and ideas. The ultimate goal is to be an expert in your niche so that you become the go-to person.

Retweeting
Encourage existing followers to retweet your links. It expands your reach beyond your own social network, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Using a URL shortener, like ow.ly, provides a good way to track your success.

Tweet during peak hours
Just because you’re nocturnal doesn’t mean the rest of your Twitter followers are. Send tweets during peak hours to give you the best opportunity to be seen and read. While there haven’t been any studies yet, your best bet for peak traffic is around the time people are getting to work, taking breaks and getting off work — 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. If these hours don’t work for you, Hootsuite allows you to set scheduled tweets so you can share the latest Lonely Island video while you’re catching up on your life.

Ask, ask, and ask some more
Ask questions. Get people engaged in a conversation to encourage two-way communication. Be in the know  about hot news items and top headlines and poll your followers. Ask who is going to win American Idol? or what do you think about those sweater vests Harper wears. Would you vote for Donald Trump if he ran for president? Questions can generate hundreds of responses and each response is seen by anyone who follows the responder, thus expanding your reach.

No one likes a try-hard
Stop thinking of Twitter as purely a marketing tool. The idea of social media is just that — social. It’s about two-way communication. People like to know that there’s a human behind a computer screen and they don’t want to be sold to all the time. Have fun and engage in conversations and discussions. Your customers will join you because they want to connect to a person, not a brand.

Free stuff is great
Try putting together a contest or a giveaway. People love free stuff. Encourage people to follow and RT in order to be entered to win. Make sure you have a killer prize that your followers would be interested in winning (and not that sweater your grandma gave you for your birthday). While this strategy is short-term in scope, incorporating a few of the other tips we’ve listed above will ensure that your followers stay beyond the life of the contest.

Mo’ money, mo’ followers?
If you’re lazy, just buy them. But we don’t recommend it. Having an active, engaged community is more valuable than having a big list of followers that don’t care about you or your organization.

image from Mashable.com

This is Part 2 of a two part series focusing on Facebook’s API and using it to create Facebook applications for brands.

With Invoke’s latest application, we were able to develop a highly customized application that maintained the client’s branding and integrated nicely into Facebook’s framework.  The client Invoke was working with already had a Facebook Fan page with a large number of fans but they needed to give their campaign a boost and make the fan page more dynamic and engaging for their loyal fan base.  Invoke saw this challenge and suggested the solution – add an completely customized app seamlessly through a new tab on the fan page.

How did we do it?  By utilizing FBML (Facebook Markup Language), our team created a user experience that made it apparent this application reflected the clients brand within Facebook.  A major challenge was determining what data was available from the API.  For example, we created an interactive Flash Map that allows users to post events on a map that feed into the Facebook database.  On paper it was a simple task, but the solution proved to be much more complex as the format of the API data was not as expected.  Other aspects of development went smoother than expected.  The application uses Flash to load videos and display a counter for donations.  Because Facebook’s API provides strong support for Flash, these flash pieces were easily reusable as “widgets” that could be posted onto Walls and News Streams.

All of these small details enhanced the user experience for both primary users of the application, and passive users who see the news stream postings.  It’s these “small details” that can lead to big results for the client as passive users “like” a posting, visit the page, become “fans”, and hopefully become primary users.  These metrics are used when determining a marketers ROI.  Within a few days of launching, the application we developed experienced this Facebook effect as the application received more than 1000 signups in just a few days.

In the end, our primary focus with Facebook development is agile development, which requires many iterations with wireframing, design, API research, and programming.  Put all of these together, and it’s a fine balance to launch an application that uses the latest offerings from the API and can be maintained for future revisions down the road.   A well conceived and executed Facebook application is a fun and engaging way to deliver a marketing message or organizational facts. The interactive factor (which is demonstrably important for Facebook users) mobilizes existing fans and turns them into active promoters of your message, which in turn builds the fanbase.  These brand ambassadors will then share and interact via the application and the messaging spreads.