Nick Cifuentes

Facebook made a bit of noise last week when they introduced the new Business Pages layout. Then, several days later, made changes to the Home page of all user profiles, and integrated a ‘Twitter’ like wall stream - Facebook’s strategy in building out a more real-time conversation tool.

As usual, when Facebook decides to make changes, your entire office, your close friends and other random people you might see throughout the day - they all have something to say, and I am sure you’ve heard the complaints already. However, I am here to bring calm to the storm…rest assured, Facebook is making a very intelligent change in status here. And most importantly, businesses will be able to flourish greatly from this move.

When it comes to the new business pages - it will now look and function much like personal profiles, offering stronger brand connections via the wall stream, which now takes center stage. When a fan comes to your page now, the very first page they look at is the ‘wall stream’. On this page, businesses that create content often, will thrive in this new environment. As a brand, the wall stream page will gather content and post information about the page and posts by the page itself. Also, content shared by you, links, photos, videos and short text updates via the status updates, and posts by your fans left for you - all now show up in the wall.

In this update, which is really the holy grail here, the wall updates you post will publish to your Fans’ news feeds, and posts by your Fans will go to their friends’ news feeds as well. So, think about this a second - the more content you are able to place and create in your channel, the more you engage with your fans, in turn, the more people you will be able to reach constantly. A single status update of your business profile seeds through Facebook into your fan’s news streams. Now, all their friend’s see this, and can ‘like’ or ‘comment’ on the update, and possibly go one step further and become a Fan of the page.

The wall stream will be a large key in driving attention to your page - use it wisely! You are familiar with how Twitter works, Facebook is integrating the same concept using this wall stream - homepage stream. The more frequency of status updates on your page, the more chance you have to stand out with your fans in the Facebook stream.

When it comes to the layout of the page, Facebook rid themselves of the long ‘leaderboard‘ layout, and moved to a tabbed layout - exactly how your user profile pages now function. And now, when a fan goes to your business page, they are defaulted to the Wall tab, so that fans can see the most recent added content to the page. And for non-Fans that visit your page, you can set a default landing page within your business profile page.

With the ability to send new potential fans to your business page, you can highlight a specific default tab to send them to that might have the most appealing or interactive elements within your page. This will allow users to better promote different portions of their page by driving ad traffic or new fans to certain sections of your profile. By driving potential fans to landing pages within Facebook, you can dramatically grow your fans and leads that ultimately improve conversion rates.

If you are running a specific campaign, or have a new application, event, or interactive element on your page you want new users to connect with - now you can easily create that conversion path for the user.

Some interesting analytics were also integrated into new business pages. Facebook now allows you to track video views, comments posted, news feed posts viewed, and this is all in addition to page views and unique views. And even better, all this data is exportable via CSV sheets.

New Design Makes Advertising on Facebook Irresistible

Facebook is clearly trying to drive more advertisers to use the platform, and it makes a lot of sense now with Facebook allowing you to drive non-fans to specific pages inside your business profile. This is going to add value and interest for users who will make their way to your Facebook page. Brands should embrace this tactic and give Facebook advertising a shot - you won’t be disappointed this time around.

People in the past have been reluctant to spend money on advertising within social networks. The real fact is, social network members are co-creators of content, and in turn, feel they have a sense of ownership within the site. Advertising needs to be more about participating in relevant conversation with consumers rather than simply pushing ads onto a social network user. Advertising should focus on being part of the conversation, not invading the social space.

Advertising needs to be about adding value to a user’s experience, as social networks are built around members adding value to each other’s lives through interaction. This is why fan sites and sponsored groups are truly one of the most successful strategies when marketing within the platforms. This act touches on the principles of interactivity, and adds value to a user’s experience via offers, previews, and the ability for user’s to help create content.

The true challenge though in creating a perfect marriage between social network advertising - marketing and that network’s user, is time. There is no quick-fix in social network marketing, sure there can be exceptions, but those are few and far between. Much like a friendship, social media marketing requires effort, time and a continual investment in the platform to build and foster relationships. Remember, your messaging needs to be authentic and humble, and built on two-way conversation, not a push (one-way) model - in the end, this will add value to the consumer’s decision.

For more information on social media marketing, please review our services, and contact us or myself if you have any questions.

Inauguration & Facebook Connect.

As today marked the first day of what many people hope is a shift in direction for the United States, CNN also embraced the day with live video coverage tied into the Facebook Connect platform.

Inauguration Day, the day Sen. Barack Obama became the first African-American President of the United States.  The day the 44^th President of the United States expressed that although we are in a midst of crisis, and the challenges we face are real, they will be met. More importantly, President Obama expressed this thought through not only television and radio, but also through streaming online video on thousands of websites across the Internet. One of those websites who met this challenge and decided to integrate the most widely used social network with this online video component, was CNN.

On CNN.com, video was integrated with the Facebook Connect platform to create a streaming conversation piece that utilized the Facebook message status capabilities along with live streaming video. This combination turned into a very successful technique that allowed users to connect with their friends during the Inauguration, and chat directly with them through the status update & comment capabilities.

This is a great example of allowing social media to connect with important, live events in today’s society. This is the kind of connection that we need to enhance in today’s web 2.0 world. Tired we are of the naysayers who express that social media is for those who have too much time or use it too frivolously. This allowed people to interact on a personal level with each other while watching a highly publicized event. Going one step further, it allowed users from across the world to access the event and make their points through conversation.

With just this example, a simple CNN.com live webcast - we see the powerful message not only in the direct message itself, but through the community we interact with daily. Your friends, friends of friends, everyone involved in the Facebook community, were able to see each other’s comments and create interaction on the platform - using a large, public event and tying it to Facebook.

Quick numbers just in courtesy of the CNN.com broadcast, during the speech, there were over 1 million people who updated their status messages, more than 85,000 updates just a minute before President Obama began to speak to the crowd. Numbers alone…wow! To say that is impressive is an understatement. The crew at Facebook said that this was the largest number of user status updates ever, in such a short period of time.

Web 2.0 - Time for “Change”.

It was not only a powerful speech, but a powerful move in a web 2.0 world. We all know that social media has had a very strong impact on this past year’s election, and something we should recognize is the fact that social media is being embraced by the current administration. Barack Obama utilizes Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and many more social networks to help connect with the users on a personal level, and realizes how important these social community networks have become in relation to his message.

Not only will President Obama’s message be relayed through these channels, but it will also help build grass-roots support for his agenda.

In a major move just done this morning, the official WhiteHouse.gov website was switched over from the old interface to the brand new ‘Obama’ look about an hour before his Inauguration. The new website looks very familiar when compared to his campaign websites. The most important aspect to recognize here, beyond the design, is the interactive features he offers on the platform. Tremendous calls-to-action that create a significant gateway to features such as his blog, videos, slideshows and much more!

Conclusion.

In the end, we have to examine the priority when confronting not only politics, but social media as well - to stand alone or stand together? When I see the new administration and analyze how they have reached where they are now - they did this with efforts that can be contributed greatly to social media and its external reach.  And when we look at a president who can connect with us in these channels and not just speak to us, BUT WITH US - no matter what party affiliation you are - you have to respect that!

God Speed.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

When approaching the subject of social bookmarks, (aka website chicklets), think about your strategy. I know it might seem easy enough to just place a ’share this’ or ‘add this’ widget to your website, but you need to consider the ‘little’ things about these valuable marketing assets.

I am not going to dive into the definition of what these devices are (as you should be aware) - you have seen these on hundreds of thousands of websites. These social bookmarks, also referred to as website chicklets, offer the ability to share content easily through social content network websites, such as Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Google, Windows Live, Yahoo Buzz, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Fark, Magnolia and many others.

These sites might seem silly at first, but if you are a fellow blogger or social media enthusiasts; you know how valuable this social media strategy is for you. These websites allow access to an audience of hundreds of millions of people who converse inside these channels daily. I don’t know if I need to go into numbers, but why not…let’s do it.

During the time frame of December 2007 through December 2008, the following are the number of unique visitors to each respective social community network website: (Remember these are unique visitors to the website - NOT overall traffic for the year)

• Google Bookmarks: 140 million people
• Yahoo! Buzz: 134 million people
• Windows Live: 88 million people
• Facebook: 60 million people
• Digg: 33.5 million people
• Twitter: 4.4 million people
• Stumbleupon: 4.2 million people
• Delicious: 1.8 million people
• Fark: 451,000 people
• Mag.nolia.com: 90,000 people
  (**numbers courtesy of Quantcast)

I think you see my point - these networks are growing on an exponential level. To think of the daily traffic numbers these websites receive every single day - it could make you shiver. Google Bookmarks alone probably sees close to 100 million visitors a day, if not more. And the numbers given above are just unique visitors to the website. Do you know how many more hundreds of millions of people come back daily to take part in what these websites offer?

These social networking channels are key components in driving not only traffic, but linkage to your website. Placing your website into these networks allows you to drive thousands of unique visitors based upon submission of your content through the social bookmark channels.

Sites.

Blogs, News sites, content networks, article banks, products of any kind online, almost anything with original content tied to it is attached to a social bookmarking tool. Some of the best and worst examples come with news websites.

The New York Times are one of those examples of great placement and overall use of website chicklet attachment. Placing this option on EVERY story on the website, as the NYT does - allows them to gain great traction on linkage and enhance their overall presence on the social network community websites.

An example of a misguided attempt at using website chicklets would be on Boston.com. I look at their placement and say OK, that is fine - but their call-outs are poorly designed, as this example blends in too much with the story overall. It is best to create a completely separate call-out-box, such as the NY Post and Philly.com does in their examples. Otherwise, look at the New York Times (above) and see how they separate it off strategically to the right side of the story - not in line with the copy. This is wonderful placement!

You need to think, when a reader is about to take hold of a story, they look at the picture and title initially, and then start reading down, looking for their CONTENT first, not a social bookmark chicklet they can pass to their friends. They have not even read the first couple paragraphs of the story yet. You have to allow the reader to get comfortable with the material before having them pass the story along to their chosen social network or email it to a friend option. In the Boston.com example, you don’t see any particular call-outs; you only see a ’share this’ application that does little for a user who is unfamiliar with the chicklet. In the NYT example, you see separate icons (calls-to-action) for Linked In, Facebook, Digg, and then you see a button to press for more options - much more effective!  Do you see my point?

Conclusion.

Whether you are a website that offers products or content of ANY kind - consider using these social bookmarks to help grow your traffic. These websites offer the ability for people to easily ’share’ your content, as well as create a number of outbound links for your website. You might have a blog, or other types of content, a viral product, videos, pictures, etc…whatever it might be - you can attach these chicklets to your overall marketing strategy and allow users to push your content into these social community content websites.

Try it - and just see what happens!

Fin.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Social Media Map.

Late last week, our team at Overdrive Interactive released the first version of the Social Media Map. This map is designed to help marketers and random people alike view the components of the social media landscape and determine how it can be best leveraged for their marketing or personal branding needs.

“We know how complex and overwhelming the social media landscape can be,” said Harry Gold, CEO of Overdrive Interactive. “We wanted to map it all out, so that marketing professionals can use it as a guide to what we believe are the most important social media tools out there. The power of social media is growing exponentially by the day, and now is the time to harness it.”

The map details the ‘key’ social media websites that Overdrive believes you should know about. As a key component in putting that list together - I can’t stress enough the importance of what we did with this social media map.

Our efforts to bring you the most up-to-date social media strategy for you company is key in our mission of social media branding. You have all heard me talk in the past about various websites that come and go, and the social media websites that seem to be flashes in the pan - but remember, they are all relevant in someway. They are helping us shape society on the Internet, and the way people, brands and identities communicate with each other.

Think about the various social engines that are present in the social community; micro-blogging, social bookmarking, groups, life-casting, travel, wikis, B2B social networks, blogs, and more! Many of these have become key points of interest in your daily Internet life, and many of you might still be wondering what certain websites do, and how you can utilize them. That is where this social media map comes into play - for you to see what type of ‘expressions’ on the web you might be curious about, and how you can get started involving yourself in them.

Soon, we will have an interactive version on the web - so stay tuned! Although for now, head to http://www.ovrdrv.com/social-media-map to download your copy today & take part in the revolution!

Fin.

I came across a viral branding website yesterday for a popular television show on HBO, Flight of the Conchords. The TV show is about two men that live in NYC doing sketch comedy and singing their comedic folk songs inside a once a week half-hour show that looks at the everyday happenings of the two main characters, Bret and Jemaine

The idea.

Take a concept of the brand and distinguish it as a ’sensation’. I know that might sound complicated - but it’s really so easy, and I don’t understand why other companies aren’t utilizing their ‘usable’ assets for something similar.

This is exactly what the Flight of the Conchords are doing with their new micro-site - “Lip Dub Video Fansterpiece.” The concept is to learn the lyrics of one of the songs the two main characters sing, and then you are supposed to videotape yourself lip-synching the song, and then upload it to the website - where you might be added to a final “Fansterpiece” that will air on HBO. This content is being advertised only on social channels, and is completely viral - meaning this is not having any media or TV dollars spent on the campaign.

The contest was launched in mid-November, and will last until the new season of the show starts in mid-January.

Simple. Simple. Simple.

I can’t get over how simple this is, but how effective it has become. They don’t give away any lavish prizes, you don’t win a trip to any special destination or big lump sum of money - just about 10 seconds of a small amount of fame.

At the same time, they do a great job of implementing bookmarks or sometimes referred to as chicklets. These are the type of calls-to-action that include the ability to post the “contest” to Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Delicious, and you can also email to a friend. These are all tactics in “spreading” the word-of-mouth further into the social networks.

The video service they are using is YouTube, making it ‘free’, as well as very viral! This allows HBO to spread their contest through the social channels with little to zero promotion on their part, which was their full intention.

Statistics.

Since the website launched in mid-November - the main website where they utilize the videos, the YouTube channel that was created for the contest - has seen nearly 8,000 views since the project launched on Nov. 13. I know those numbers are not monumental, but you have to think about the ‘trickle’ down effect from this contest alone.

On the microsite, you also are able to access the Flight of the Conchord’s Facebook and MySpace pages. Their current Facebook page has a more than 245,000 fans, and they have a little over 25,000 friends on MySpace. These channels were setup well before the contest started…but both channels have seen an increase in activity in fans/friends since the middle of last month.

So What?

Well, I tell you this information because it’s important to consider the outreach of a ‘viral’ campaign, such as this one, and what it can do for a brand. Chances are, many people are going to submit videos to try and appear on the channel, and many more people may just watch the videos other people create. Either way, their creating a ‘buzz’ about the show and the new season, interest of not only current fans, but new fans of the show are found through the ability of allowing others to easily spread the contest into the social content networks, such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter, and so on. They attach links to the show’s page on the HBO website, as well as create easy access to the show’s MySpace and Facebook pages.

Through a viral campaign like this, you should explore your brand further to see what kind of similar outreach you may be able to do. This is social media branding 101 friends - don’t take something as small and ‘funky’ as this to be something silly - when in all honesty, they spent next to nothing to engage new fans and current fans of the show - to stay tuned to the new season, maybe buy the DVD, purchase some apparel, or some other Flight of the Conchords related materials. It’s genius.

The point is - you need to think about social media branding if you have not already. Agreed, for some brands social media might not be the way to go - but as they say so often - “don’t knock it before you try it.”

Chances are, I think it will.

For more information, and if you have any questions on viral or social media branding - feel free to contact me @ nicholas.cifuentes@gmail.com

Although this might be slightly old news, it still something worth writing about. A new report from Peter Schilling, the Director of IT @ Amherst College, said that 438 students who enrolled at Amherst this fall, 432 had joined the Amherst College Class of 2012 Facebook Group by the end of August (classes started the first week of September). Schilling also said that 3,225 posts were made in the group by that time.

To think that only six students out of an entire class are not on Facebook is quite an astonishing fact. Over the past four years Facebook has become a second language on college campuses nationwide. Ask almost any student what ‘friending’, ‘poking’ or ‘leaving a message on someone’s wall’ means and they will be able to tell you almost instantly.

Facebook is your identity.

For many teenagers, college students, young adults, and even adults; Facebook is simply irresistible. It honestly is. Just look @ the numbers:

• Just this past June, Facebook became the largest social network by reach at 132 million uniques, a 35% jump from the end of 2007, according to comScore.
• Facebook’s user base grew by nearly 25% to 102 million active users. Facebook nearly added 20 million more members during the third quarter, 80% of which came from outside the U.S.
• 17 countries now have more than 1 million Facebook users: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Chile, France, Australia, Colombia, Venezuela, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Argentina. South Africa and Belgium will be next to cross the mark.
• Facebook’s torrid growth in Europe and South America has continued. 10 of the 15 fastest growing countries in 3Q08 were European; 3 were South American.

Despite the international growth, Zuckerberg (Sir Mark), recently said in a German Newspaper interview that the company is focused on growth first, revenue second.

Sir Mark said:

“What every great internet company has done is to figure out a way to make money that has to match to what they are doing on the site. I don’t think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. But on both sites people find information valuable. I’m pretty sure that we will find an analogous business model. But we are experimenting already. One group is very focused on targeting; another part is focused on social recommendation from your friends. In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today… Growth is primary, revenue is secondary.”

And when asked about a potential IPO:

“No, we are really not planning to go public. For the next few years we are really focused on user growth.”

Finally, when asked about why the company is allowing employees to sell up to 20% of their vested shares (up to $900K), Zuckerberg answered:

“We are not going public for a while. So we want the people to have enough money to life [sic] for the period of time until we go public. In the early days of Facebook I was able to get $900,000 dollar of liquidity. That made a pretty big deal to me. We want engineers or other people in the company don’t have to worry about simple things.”

Facebook Futures.

Recently, Zuckerberg spoke @ the Future of Web Apps Expo in London - although mostly a controlled PR show for web app companies; Sir Mark hinted at a few things, most interestingly the theme of ‘enabling people to share’.

Some interesting tidbits from the event: (thanks to insidefacebook.com)

• The vision of Facebook Connect is to enable people to do on the rest of the web what they currently do on Facebook.
• There’s no firm launch date for Connect, but it’s expected to be within the next few months.
• As everyone already knows, Facebook does not want to encourage third party applications that are only interested in occupying profile space. The recent redesign has been specifically developed to encourage applications that enable sharing between users. Part of this is the prioritisation of feeds over profile boxes.
• Talk of the payment system was downplayed, and was even referred to as “the rumoured payment system.” (It’s more than a rumour, given the solicitation for developers to sign up for a beta programme last year, but obviously there’s nothing to be announced imminently.)
• Mark talked about his loose theory of a “Moore’s Law” for content sharing: the amount of sharing that goes on is growing exponentially over time.
• Asked about Open Auth, Open ID and other standards initiatives, the view expressed was very much along the lines of not having done it yet as opposed to not wanting to follow open standards at all. Mark’s view of Facebook as it stands was that “It’s more closed than we want it to be.” However, he believes Facebook’s implementation of things such as the Platform APIs and FBML are more developed than their open standard equivalents.
• Asked if he would build Facebook (or any web application) the same today as he did four years ago he said no, especially given advances in cloud computing and the availability of other sites-as-platforms.
• Despite running a multi-billion dollar company, he still goes into the code base and fixes bugs from time-to-time as a way to keep in touch with how the site is being developed and abstracted. (Still doing the dirty work…what a guy!)

To see more about what M. E. Zuckerberg had to say about Facebook, see his BBC interview here & his FOWA interview coming soon here.

Final.

Whether you are a student, e-marketer, or just a normal someone (wink), you know where this is heading - Facebook is growing daily, and your just a small part of that. So go ahead and look @ those pictures from the rager last night…look @ those party invites you have yet to confirm, go write on Steph’s wall about her new dog pictures…go nudge that other someone, go see what the class is saying about the new Physics professor, go watch that video with that kid getting hit in the nuts with the soccer ball, go see how many comments you have that partially naked photo of you that you just ‘had’ to get up on the site as soon as you got back from the party, go add that fun application where you can send growing plants to your friends and let’s go buy fake gift icons for a $1 and send them to everyone too.

I am not making fun…I take part in this revolution daily.  I just always like to step out of the ‘branding’ work I do on a daily basis (sometimes it feels much more often) and realize the actuality of the framework in this platform.

It really is amazing…or scary.  You choose.

Fin.

Porn. It is and always will be a key element of the Internet – with it accounting for almost 10 percent of all Web searches, according to Hitwise.  

But at one point many, many years ago (exactly 10) – a massive 20 percent of all Internet Web searches accounted for porn. However, thanks to sites like Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites, porn on the Internet is not as popular as it used to be – simply put.  

Hitwise researchers said that surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago – the sites that grab all the searches now are the social networking sites.  

The research said that visits to porn sites have decreased, and social networking traffic as increased. 

Now, I don’t entirely believe this – to think people are so busy with MySpace that they don’t have time to look at porn.  I believe that web growth ‘overall’ has lended mostly to this result, and other changes in the way people utitlize the Internet - that is the true difference.

Point is, the Internet is bigger then ever, and much more people are using it than ever before.  And more kids then ever are involved online – so it makes sense that fewer users are looking at porn.

Another point – you can look at Facebook at work, more than you can look at porn. And if your working – chances are your using the web at work, more than you were 10 years ago – before social media websites existed.

Enough said.

In a recent survey done by Careerbuilder.com, an increasing number of employers are taking a look at staff’s social networking profiles before hiring a candidate.

The survey found that 20 percent of companies admitted to checking out the profile pages of potential employees on social-networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace before deciding to hire them. Another 9 percent said that they would begin to review potential employees social-networking websites in the future.

The research also revealed that while 24 percent of employers had hired a member of the staff based on their social-networking profile, 33 percent had decided NOT to make a job offer after reviewing certain content on a profile.  Use of drugs, alcohol and posting of photographs that seemed ‘inappropriate’ or ‘provocative’ were identified as the most popular reasons why employers eliminated a candidate after reviewing their social-networking profile.

Should you be scared of this?

Yes.  You absolutely should.  If you dragged yourself out for a Saturday night pub crawl, blacked out at some point and the next day arrives with you not remembering what happened - be worried. In today’s world - transitioning from school to a professional career can be a lot of work, but just be careful with what you do on your social-networking profiles.  You don’t want to have last week’s party to be the reason you don’t get hired for that job you’ve always you wanted.  These pictures work great in college, and globally acceptable among that crowd - but the professional world is a much different story. Pictures and comments your friends might leave about you could become a liability in the workplace.  

First, privacy settings are your friend - use them.  You can set websites like Facebook and MySpace to allow only your friends to view pictures or profile specifics.  Blogs can be a huge risk too - so unless you are blogging about things like what I am talking about - keep it clean and remember, people can find what you are reading easily - so use those privacy settings. And even if you do have a job - remember that people get fired for unauthorized blogging all the time now - so BE CAREFUL!

Are you that person that Google’s themselves all the time?  You should be.  You have to keep up with what people might be saying about you on Yahoo! and Google. Or, if you are really curious, give Pipl.com, a “people search engine” a try.  What you see here is the same thing a possible hiring manager is seeing - be careful!

And another thing to be careful of - don’t befriend people who you don’t know.  You just don’t know if it will come back to bite you later.  Keep your friend list to ‘friends’ and associates in both personal and professional social networks.  

Case Study.

A bank intern, in 2007, was caught through Facebook lying to his boss about a family emergency, when he actually just wanted to ‘party it up’ on Halloween instead.

Kevin Colvin (pictured below) was an intern at Anglo Irish Bank’s North American arm, was busted by his manager Paul Davis after Kevin told Paul that he had to miss work because of a family emergency.  His boss then turned up this photo of Colvin on his Facebook profile from a Halloween party he apparently missed work to attend, and attached it to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it.

Below is the short email exchange and incriminating photo.

You always knew it was going to happen eventually – colleges and universities nationwide using social media to find new students. Looking for that edge to find the top candidates, schools are reverting to social networking sites, message boards, online video and podcasts to bring the talent!

It makes a great amount of sense to do such a thing.  You have to go where the audience is, and with millions of people going on social networking websites daily, it’s only obvious to attack such a market.

I used to be a college student, and working in social media, sometimes feel like I still am – but that is the medium where you KNOW students will go daily.  There is less chance they will open a college/university email, newsletter, mail brochure, or go to high school college fairs – chances are – you will absolutely find them on Facebook.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling said that nearly 29 percent of colleges use blogs as recruitment tools, while the percentage of colleges using online chat rooms jumped 12 percent in 2002 to nearly 35 percent in 2006.

Alliant International University recently ran a Facebook ad for its Center for Forensic Studies.  The ad targeted users with bachelor’s degrees in psychology that watched the show “Criminal Minds.” And because Facebook allows you to target users in ads using the specific information they list in their profiles, such as favorite TV shows and education – this allows advertisers to target very specific users.

Through the ad, Alliant asked users to take an online quiz to find out how much they knew about serial killers.  The answer page gave them the choice of joining the forensic program’s Facebook group or linking to the program’s home page.

When all was said and done, almost 5,000 people took the quiz and nearly 500 of them made it all the way to the how-to apply page on the university website.

Now, some experts have said that allocating too many resources, (aka $$$$$), to social media efforts does not prove its return.  I beg to differ – not that I have evidence to prove such a statement, but based on the basic philosophy behind social media and its effect – clearly there is only a win-win situation involved here.  Such as this, if your going to establish a blog network to promote recruiting – make sure your website is up to par with what you are doing on the social media side.  The last thing you want to do is have a kick-ass blog, and then turn students to a poorly built college/university homepage.

If you are going to operate podcasts and video through places such as iTunes, YouTube, etc…make sure you try and implement that technology on your regular website as well.  This is where branding becomes an issue – and a possible students views the entrance page on the blog, video, or podcast area as great, and then quickly ‘bounce’ as soon as they reach your regular website.

One example of a college website that does it well, in terms of how their ‘regular’ home page/ entrance page looks is Bryant University in Rhode Island.  They successfully integrated a ‘tour’ entrance page, in addition to their normal homepage, that uses their current students into a ‘video-friendly’ format that ‘pops’ in terms of functionality and is useful for actual information necessary for a student to make a decision – taking them to the ‘regular’ admissions home page.  Schools should consider this outline when thinking about organizing their recruiting approach.

With the back-to-school season in full swing, a number of retailers have lined up social media tactics to attract new shoppers.

Targeting teens and young adults – social media has emerged as a key component in drawing new targeted users through social networking sites, such as facebook, to deliver their marketing campaigns.

With an already shaky economy scaring buyers away from the stores, shoppers need to realize that retailers will only use these types of marketing efforts more often as consumers continue to pinch pennies.

To promote a new clothing line, J.C. Penny created an online game called “DorkDodge” in which a girl has to navigate through a number of unwanted boyfriends to find her dream date.  The retailer also launched an integrated marketing campaign that gave the teens the opportunity to ‘get that look’, using a clothing theme from the movie “The Breakfast Club.”

And retailers like Victoria’s Secret and Apple are using their valued partnerships with universities and college-aged consumers as a key demographic.  Victoria’s Secret partnered with 33 universities to launch Pink’s Collegiate Collection, a series of shirts, accessories and sports gear cross-branded with colors, names and mascots from participating universities.  And as part of Apples’s back-to-school promotion, students and faculty of an accredited university receive a free iPod with the purchase of a computer.

And it should be said, that retailers will find a stronger influence with social media and Web 2.0 experiences by allowing most of the benefits coming from branding and awareness building, rather than direct sales.