There were five primary areas of focus for the event.

1) Why Pinterest
2) Pinterest Interest Graph
3) New product enhancements (Rich Pin & Mobile Pin It)
4) Analytics & Partner Tools
5) Partner case studies & Best Practices

WHY PINTEREST

Ben Silbermann, Pinterest Co-Founder & CEO started the day by telling the story of Pinterest. He discussed his love of collections when he was young… stamps, butterflies, baseball cards, etc… he saw an opportunity as there was not an elegant solution to organize collections online.

He had roots with Google and was enamored by how the search giant was able to so seamlessly focus on enabling search & retrieval across the web. If you know what you are looking for Google provides an ideal platform for search & retrieval.

He actually related Pinterest more to Google & search than to other social channels such as Facebook. With Pinterest people vs. bots are indexing the webs content and organizing them by interests, something that is a bit more subjective but aligns with human behavior.

One of his key points was in defining Pinterests role in discovery of content.

"Discovery on the web is an unsolved problem & massive opportunity" - Ben Silbermann

With Pinterest, people are making discovery possible by organizing the web's content around interests. This is their key point of differentiation as the platform is about discovery and action.

It was interesting to hear Ben's story about the roots of Pinterest and it also provided insight into where the platform is going which leads to the Interest Graph.

INTEREST GRAPH

The Pinterest team spent a good bit of time discussing what they coined the Pinterest Interest Graph. An interest graph is an online representation of the specific things in which an individual is interested. And because the focus of Pinterest is based on what people are indexing on the web and then categorizing by interests, the Pinterest Interest Graph is the foundation for their business moving forward.

A key point of differentiation between Facebook's Social Graph & Pinterest & even Twitters interest graphs are the fact that Interest Graphs are used to create people's interest networks whereas Facebook and other social networks are organized around an individual's friends and connections that follow them across the web.

The key to the interest graph for Pinterest is the ability to create personalized experiences that change based on an individuals life stage and interests. The association is less with people and more with things. This may include life events such as marriage, children, etc… and Pinterest hopes that by focusing on interests they are building a sustainable platform that can grow with users over time and continue to provide both utility and relevance based on discovery.

The key to the interest graph from a brand perspective is that a single product can be repined into other areas. As the single object passes across the interest graph across categories you are able to leverage the network of interests and passions vs. pushing a message and see how your product resonates in real time. This leads to driving discoverability by interest as well as distribution and lengthens the shelf life of content as it continually gets repined.

Interest Graph in action for me... I like Robots

PRODUCT ENHANCEMENTS

Pin it Button - the theme that was repeated the most over the course of the event was the focus on the Pin It button. Pinterest reiterated that a strong Pinterest strategy starts with enabling your domain. By enabling and focusing on driving & optimizing pins down to the individual product level are the key to driving more engagement and driving higher referral traffic.

Mobile Pinning - Earlier this week Pinterest launched the ability to integrate the Pin It button into a brands mobile application to further drive discoverability via mobile for both iOS & Android via SDKs. The SDK allows a brands users to create Pinterest content inside the branded app. Currently, this only supports pinning from the web, but the ability to pin local images is on the roadmap as well.

Here is an example of Mobile Pinning in action from the Brit + Co (launch partner) mobile app

Rich Pins - Also tied to this weeks launch was the release of Rich Pins. Pinterest hopes that Rich Pins lead to action and by adding more brand data to a pin tied to products, recipes & movies that more direct attribution and value for brands and users will be apparent. Product pins from a brand can showcase active inventory as well as price & references the source directly from the pin. Recipe Rich Pins allow more data to be added directly to the pin and movie pins offer insight into reviews as well as cast directly from the pin.

Product Pins

Recipe Pins

Movie Pins

Implementation - In order to implement Rich Pins meta tags need to applied to your domain and decide on the type of rich pin you want to apply for. Then once the meta tags have been validated you can apply to get them from Pinterest.

From a brand perspective, this is the first step to further enabling brand content and attribution. Especially the product pins can be of value to further drive action when discovered.

ANALYTICS & PARTNER TOOLS

On March 11th, Pinterest launched their data analytics tool. This was another key discussion point during the course of the event. The analytics tool supports Pinterest's position to enable a brands .com as the suite focuses on content pinned directly from the .com and focus on how many people are pinning from the website, impressions & reach over time and which pins receive the most repins and who pins them as well as what other content people are pinning alongside them.

This data can be extremely useful when incorporating top pins into tailoring content for the website as well as other social channels. Nordstrom was a presenting brand and the key takeaway from their presentation was their focus on curating pins and using analytics as a driver for surfacing content on their website, e-mail as well as in store. By leveraging Pinterest in this way, Nordstrom claimed increased sell through in stores and online.

Nordstrom Top Pins via .com

Nordstrom in store

Pinterest also rolled out new partner tools starting with a revamped business.pinterest.com as well as a new business blog that will focused on enabling partners and will serve as the location for new product feature announcements. The team also announced that they will soon be providing webinars on best practices to further enable partners.

Unlike Facebook & Twitter, Pinterest is less about working directly with their partner teams and more about enabling the platform to allow brands to maximize their presence.

CASE STUDIES

During the course of the event four brands were represented including Target, Sephora, Nordstroms & Sony Electronics. I have already referenced how Nordstroms is leveraging Pinterest data to drive their content & in-store strategy. Below are a few key points from the Sephora & Sony Electronics presentations.

Sephora

The most compelling elements from the Sephora case study was their laser focus on identifying trends via pins. Their goals were tied to making it easier to pin from Sephora.com, use e-mail to encourage Pinterest engagement and encourage clients to pin their beauty shopping lists.

• Focus on top pins to inform content strategy across channels
• Content goes beyond simple product to incorporate DIY type content
• Testing various types of Pin to Win initiatives that are cross promoted

• Embedded Pinterest across social channels such as Facebook
• Created pinnable e-mails drove significant results including a 60% increase in referral traffic from Pinterest that has not subsided
• Focus on creating a shoppable experience on Pinterest
• Claimed that shoppers are closer to purchase in the path to purchase and stated a statistic of 15x the sales impact vs. Facebook

Sony Electronics

I was most impressed by the work of Sony electronics of the four brands that presented. What I liked about their story is they are not the first brand you think of when you think about the Pinterest platform. They are a manufacturer vs. retailer and their audience is a younger, high tech male group who is not the primary audience of the platform. They had very clearly defined strategy objectives of driving sales, acquisition and brand affinity on the platform and they have leveraged the social power of their internal organization as well as consumers to power their experience.

• Audience (Sony electronics appeal to more than women)
• They curated content that existed, retro products, artist style, influencers who shoot with their cameras etc…
• Launched presence with an employee contest to educate and curate relevant content across the organization
• Drove awareness via the Sony Electronics blog & e-mail
• E-mail is a critical component to their Pinterest strategy, pin, collect, share --> Pinterest focused messages get double the open rate
• Inform their content strategy based on Pins
• Leverage 3rd parties such as Curalate to identify influencers
• Executed innovative programs such as Pin Deals - unlock via 20 pins - flash sale & Pin it to give it - repins = $1 to charity and received 13,000 pins

• Partnered with relevant brands to enter new categories such as Pinterest partnership with American Airlines to enter travel

BEST PRACTICES

The following is a list of best practices that were discussed during the course of the event. This is not a comprehensive best practices list, but does highlight the key points that the Pinterest team & brands represented did speak to repeatedly.

Strategy

• The Pinterest team reiterated that the best Pinterest strategy starts with your domain.
• Remember boards are not destinations, most of the interaction will happen at the Pin level
• Pinnable E-mail is a critical component to a successful Pinterest strategy, enable content to be pinned on the individual content level

Platform

• Add Pin-It Button to domain
• Verify the business with Pinterest
• Enable Domain Analytics
• Activate & Incorporate Rich Pins to create a cleaner connection to inventory and enabling action
• Leverage the Mobile SDK's to further enable sharing directly from a brands app

Content

• Learn from top pins, timely relevant pins that map to domain are key
• Optimize pins, Sony's audience preferred product shots while Target's audience resonates with Lifestyle images
• Short Captions are key, the goal is to tease to promote click through
• Focus on content that will drive repins
• Pin your product along with other inspirational content to boards
• Focus on creating ripples with content vs. "feed stuffing"

Contests

• When it comes to Pin It to Win it type of initiatives, it is important to ensure that there is a variety of content to pin
• A pin from a Pin it to Win it is good, but the focus should be on repins. Repins are the key to successful promotion on the platform

SUMMARY

The first Pinterest partner event was definitely insightful and the event closed with the following points:

1) Discovery on the web is an unsolved problem & massive opportunity
2) People are making discovery possible by organizing the web's content around interests
3) You can make your business more discoverable by inspiring people to pin

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The explosion of fitness related wearable technology like the Fit Bit, Nike Fuel Band & the recently launched Jawbone fitness band have led to a rise in mass appeal for wearable tech. The trend has been if the wearable technology provides relevance & utility as a natural extension of our daily lives we are willing to put our time & dollars towards supporting this type of product. For Google Glass, the goal is to further integrate the real world into the Google ecosystem thus creating a natural extension into your daily life, even if you look a bit like Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Google Glass has been the subject of a lot of hype over the past few months. From influencers wearing them at SXSW to recent sightings throughout NYC. What started as a project from Google X Labs is now on the verge of becoming a mainstream device. Whether this will go from Uber nerd category to mainstream essential is yet to be seen, but this will fundamentally impact the intersection of physical & digital moving forward.

Google Glass, What are the specs and what should I expect from the UX?

The recent release of the Google Glass tech specs outline Google's commitment to bring the product to market and attempt to redefine how we interact with the physical world. The specs include:

• a high resolution display which is equivalent to a 25 inch HD TV from 8 feet away
• 5 MP camera and 720P video
• Bone condution audio transducer
• Wi-fi & Bluetooth enabled
• 12 GB of useable memory synced with Google cloud storage (16 GB total)
• 1 full day of typical use

Outside of the tech specs, I was really interested in diving into the Google Mirror developer API's. This is where you can really begin to see how Google plans on allowing the developer ecosystem to support the product & experiences moving forward.

One of the core elements of the user experience is tied to the concept of Timeline Cards. These cards display the top level content that users will see. There are essentially two levels of navigation, with a top level primary and a sub-timeline for easy organization. Timeline cards support text, rich HTML, images or video content. From a brand perspective, understanding the relationship between relevant content & how information is presented & consumed via Timeline cards will be a key area to focus on as launch approaches.

Similar to how Facebook allows the usage of "action objects" to further drive content acceleration and discoverability through the social graph, the Google Mirror API allows the addition of action based interactivity into the app experience. For now commands such as "read aloud", "reply by voice" and "navigate to" are inherent to the navigation, but this can extend "discover" or other action verbs. More importantly, it will be interesting to track how user actions are then reported back, or ultimately mapped to contextual or location based search. It is easy to see how actions could then be turned into opportunities to share both within the construct of Google & possibly overlays to the physical world via augmented reality tagging or proximity based recommendations.

Subscriptions seem to be a key element to the Google Glass experience. Both from an engagement & tracking standpoint. Subscriptions tell you when users choose specific menu items or when they share to a contact. Once an action is taken, it will be possible to take a specific action, such as sharing a photo. This will allow branded experiences to see what is truly engaging to the end user.

Location is going to be a key element of Google Glass. If the user opt's-in and grants access it is possible to use the Google Mirror API to observe the user's location in timeline items, request their last known location directly, and subscribe to periodic location updates. You can also deliver pre-rendered map images in timeline cards by giving the Mirror API the coordinates to draw. Basically, location is the key attribute to connect the user to their environment that can then be overlaid map data or even with augmented reality interfaces.

The biggest brand opportunities will be tied to mapping users locations with digital overlays to take real-world actions. This is already coming to life through Google's augmented reality massively multiplayer online game for Android Ingress. Ingress seems to be designed with Google Glass in mind. I will be going into deeper detail around the impact of Ingress and the potential for brands in a future post but brands such as Zipcar & Jamba Juice are already testing the impact that this type of engagement can provide.

What is the potential for Google Glass over the next 3-5 years?

Interconnectivity - The intersection of technology and utility is going to be a key area of focus over the next 3-5 years. Interconnection between smart grid technology in our homes that intersect with mobile devices such as Google Glass will continue to gain traction. When it comes to wearable technology, the overlay of digital into our everyday lives via products such as Google Glass are just the tip of the iceberg on a new landscape of interaction both physically and socially. Changing the view of real world with digital overlays will continue to develop into a new form of communication and interaction.

Contextual Data – The trend digitally is a movement from mass social interaction towards contextual networks. This same concept will push through wearable technology. You look at the rise of the Nike Fuel band and the gamification and sharability of personal information. This trend will continue to expand beyond fitness into other facets of our lives. Data tied to fitness, work habits, leisure etc… will all begin to create different sets of data that can then be visualized, gamified and used to help us lead more efficient, effective lives.

This also maps to Google's larger strategy tied to contextual & personalized search. If you watch what is happening from a search standpoint, one of the bigger trends is the move towards personalized & socially enabled search where results will differ by individual, and social weighting of content will be a key driver to determine what search results you see. This coincides with Google Glass, as the intersection of location, search & social are evident based on how the UX is being defined.

Content anywhere – How we consume content has changed significantly over the last decade. Content ubiquity will become accelerated with Google Glass and similar products that provide HD display's and voice activated controls allowing for access to streaming content on demand. This is just the beginning as paper thin displays and wearable technology continues to evolve. What was once thought to be science fiction is quickly becoming reality.

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Twitter launched Vine on January 24th, 2013 and it has not left the top 20 in the app store since launch. Vine's six second video loops are quick, lightweight pieces of content that are ideal for social sharing. Initially launched via a mobile app for iOS (Android app in development) this high-level version of an animated gif is quick & easy to capture. Just point your device, touch the screen and the app records up to 6 seconds allowing for starts & stops.

According to Tech Crunch, Vine (2.8% penetration) has taken an early lead over the likes of Viddy (0.5) & Socialcam (0.2). There is significant opportunity tied to short form video assets & social sharing as the same article referenced that 98% of overly active users shared photos whereas only 4% shared video.

With the recent changes announced by Facebook and the importance of visual content that drives engagement, having the opportunity to create short-form content may be a powerful tool for brands to consider.

Vines can be a powerful addition to a solid content strategy. Whether it's showcasing supplementary branded content or simply finding a relevant extension of your brand to highlight, Vine can provide yet another option to keep users attention.

Here are 12 examples of Vine in Action:

1) Drive awareness to an experiential event
BeatsByDre teased the opening of it's SXSW Pill Clinic with this Vine.

2) Share Unique Branded Experiences
Urban Outfitter's SXSW alien teased via Vine

3) Highlight Brand Advocates
Kid Robot highlighted a user's Vine

4) Pop-Culture Co-Creation in Action
Houston Texans merge their fans & brand with pop culture relevance

5) Preview Products
Intel is leveraging Vine to preview technology

6) Highlight a Cause
OKC Thunder highlighting a social cause via Vine

7) Extend the Brand Persona
Trident is using Vine to extend the core attributes of their brand

Preview with visual context
Warner Bros. promoting a movie with relevant context

9) Share Important News
Kickstarter announces a record

10) Drive promotional awareness
Sacramento Kings showcasing promotional items

11) Leverage Vine for promotion
Regal Cinemas leveraged Vine as part of a promotional announcement

12) Fan Appreciation
Chick-Fil-A show fan appreciation via Vine

Be aware when leveraging Vine that there are issues with quality control, as the current versions do not allow moderation. The focus should be less on community building & aggregation and more focused on creating content that is then distributed through owned channels.

Also note that it is important to determine the message that is to be conveyed and ensure that it ladders back to the core attributes and persona of the brand prior to just filming.

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"From the beginning, our goal with News Feed was different from any other social service was trying to provide... You should be able to share any content that you want. Status updates, links, photos, etc... You should be able to share with any audience that you want, publicly, with the world, with just friends, or privately" - Mark Zuckerberg

Here are feature highlights from today's announcement:

The newly designed newsfeed will start rolling out in limited rollouts today with a focus on a "mobile first" design.

The new design is heavily reliant on the ability to segment content by feed type allowing for more control:

• All Friends will showcase everything your friends are sharing. This feed will highlight friend content and add a "facepile" type of overlay to the side of the story to show who has shared the content. Social connectivity is highlighted as the intersection of timeline & the newsfeed becomes more pervasive with the inclusion of friends "add a friend" which allows you to see more about that person directly in the news feed.

• Photos will provide a feed with nothing but photos from your friends and Brand Pages you like.

• Music a feed with posts about the music users listen to.

• Following, a feed with the latest news from the Pages you like and the people you follow, think of this as a Facebook "newspaper" feature.

Within the News Feed design, photos are getting larger in the new design and attachments from links will also get more space. This will include a much larger image, a more prominent title, and a longer summary to accompany a linked story.

This is great, but what does this mean as a brand?

Visual Enablement: Further enabling visual storytelling and cross platform consistency are at the heart of the change. One of the forgotten elements previously is the brands cover photo. Yes, it will pop in the newsfeed when the image changes, but with the refresh the cover photo will be pulled into page "Like" stories in the news feed for both organic & paid. This will provide more context about the page, but also provides another opportunity for the brand to be relevant and engaging with their cover photo & profile photo combination. More frequent updates may be required to ensure that brands are maximizing their opportunities.

Also note that when people and pages post photos, Facebook will try to display the caption on top of the image if the caption is legible and the image does not contain text and when the image is of sufficient size (at least 425x157px). This puts additional emphasis on either minimal or extremely engaging copy.

Engagement: The core motivation of this revamp is focused solely on keeping users engaged by allowing more freedom and control over the platform and the information that is relevant for them. Facebook is positioning this change as a more engaging place for brand messages. The goal is to get more people spending time reading and interacting with the news feeds and this should beget more opportunities for us a marketers to reach & engage with our audience.

In my opinion it is too early to tell whether this is good or bad news for brands. The fear from a brand perspective is to lose engagement opportunities by being relegated to a lower visibility feed such as the "following" feed, which currently will not support paid at the initial rollout, but Facebook left it open for opportunities later this year.

Also, one key point to consider, the affinity & engagement of content is key in this new structure, as the more individuals engage with content, the higher the position within the feeds. Obviously this is a key attribute of EdgeRank, but engagement on a post level is still as important as ever. Facebook did confirm that as of now the change is mainly aesthetic for desktop and there will not be a change to Edgerank as it stands today, however this is something that continues to evolve and I would not be surprised if there are changes when the change is fully rolled out to the public.

Paid: The initial rollout will focus on better utilizing paid assets via incremental value adds vs. new streams tied to feeds . but Facebook did leave the door open for injected paid units into subsequent feeds such as "following". Let's fast forward for a moment, the new feeds will offer more opportunities to append paid for both small & large advertisers as a whole. The new model also reinforces spend on the post level to further drive visibility of content across feeds. It will be interesting to test media against feed types as units become available as the new design looks to further enhance existing units and offer more opportunities for engagement.

Example of new Page Post Ads

Example of new Sponsored Ads

Brand Reach & Visibility: More real-estate should theoretically increase the throughput of branded content if it is optimized for EdgeRank. This also reinforces the importance of having a relevant content strategy that can maximize content distribution across the various feeds. The thought is that this change will net more visibility for brands moving forward. The key to increasing reach and visibility is to combine organic engagement and then amplify the content via paid that is driving engagement naturally. This Pwned Media approach will optimize paid while leveraging the best of organic engagement to propel content and further drive impactful brand reach & visibility.

The assumption on increased engagement through segmentation/multiple feeds may have an initial lag. The native user behavior of the primary newsfeed as the consumer catch-all and primary point of engagement will remain for awhile until users are reconditioned to filter feeds. One of the inherent benefits of the news feed over the last six years has been tied to the simplicity and minimal effort on behalf of the user to engage with content. It remains to be seen how much usage the secondary feed options will see in terms of interaction type.

Analytics: From an analytics perspective, my hope is to also append feed distribution as an option to track content performance. This would then inform content decisions in addition to social interactions to further optimize content for optimal impact. As it stands today, Facebook has stated there will be no immediate impact on performance, and they will continue to monitor various performance metrics, including performance of Page posts and paid media.

Here is a link to Join the waiting list for the new News Feed.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

I have recently written a number of posts on the subject of Facebook publishing from the intersection of Paid & Owned, the importance of visual storytelling and best practices for optimizing content. All of these topics are relevant to this conversation and further frame the importance of the following statement:

"Everything happens in the newsfeed vs brand pages"

This was an incredibly simple statement that all of us who publish on behalf of brands sometimes take for granted. The numbers definitely back up the statement with 115 billion impressions served daily via desktop and 65 billion newsfeed impressions served daily via mobile.

Think about your own behavior when it comes to interacting with brand related content on Facebook. How often are you clicking through to a brands page to consume their content? This divide is even better visualized when it comes to users mobile interactions?

Where do you consume brand messages on the desktop?

This becomes even more apparent via mobile!

The reality is most social interaction happens via the newsfeed. Interactions being likes, comments and shares. Most brands approach content publishing from the perspective that users come to the brands page and consume their content in a linear manner. The reality is brands need to create a publishing strategy that is optimized for Edgerank and based on deliberate content buckets that are relevant & engaging for the brands audience that can be consumed in a non-linear manner but still represent the core social persona of the brand. This requires a detailed strategy that is grounded in the core attributes of the brand that then leads to content pillars that are designed to maximize engagement.

The following graphic represents the % breakdown across interaction types.

With so much consumption happening via the newsfeed, shouldn't the in-stream experience/opportunities be as relevant and compelling as possible? This leads me to what I see as the next step in the evolution of brand publishing and that is going a step beyond visual storytelling and incorporating compelling interactive experiences to enhance the publishing strategy.

The recent announcement and coverage of Stipple's Facebook support and subsequent usage by Justin Timberlake to provide interactive cover art is a glimpse into the future of newsfeed publishing.

Interactive posting is not a new concept. I remember first seeing this executed by Vitrue's platform back in 2011 via the Buffalo Wild Wings example below. Leveraging this type of interactive content publishing was one of the enabling factors that has driven Buffalo Wild Wings to acquire over 9 million fans. Their content strategy has led to an engagement rate of 4.8% over the last 30 days with over 477,000 interactions. Having a point of differentiation in-stream has led to positive results for the brand.

The number of vendors supporting interactive posting in-stream has grown since 2011 with shops such as Shop Igniter providing solutions that are optimized to support rich interactive in-stream campaigns to drive lead generation, giveaways, promotions, etc...

The real key point of differentiation now vs. then is the ability to create immersive newsfeed experiences for both desktop & mobile by leveraging responsive design. Now it becomes easier to publish across both desktop & mobile to drive in-stream & even in-app (Facebook's app) interaction.

The example below shows an example from Shop Igniter's platform that enables in-stream video that then drives to a mobile optimized experience based on responsive design that allows the flexibility of staying within the application, but also allows the addition of an action object in the experience that extends the reach of a users action beyond the newsfeed into the activity ticker. This is a key element to further drive distribution and discoverability of content as well as the fact that the newsfeed does not support action objects directly.

The GoPro example is a great example of a light weight execution that does not rely on driving to an end destination to generate engagement & story creation. This in my mind is the next evolution of content publishing in-stream.

Similar to the evolution of static banners to rich media, creating compelling content that is optimized for EdgeRank, light weight in design and contains the experience within the existing stream and Facebook application across both desktop and mobile that also taps into the social graph to append actions is an ideal addition to an owned content strategy.

This also maximizes the principles of real-time paid amplification that I have discussed in the past because these are actual posts being created on Facebook's platform that can fit seamlessly into a paid media strategy.

The other benefit to this type of publishing is the engagement data on the content level that can drive further optimization of content moving forward. By tracking impressions, engagement rate and social actions, we can directly map to our core KPI's.

When it comes to Facebook, it is not enough to just have a content calendar. It is incredibly important to have a true strategic framework that outlines the brands publishing strategy and how the content will be optimized to drive targeted reach, but it is also important to leverage interactive assets to drive tangible results and activation where appropriate.

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Now it is possible to add a data driven overlay to an image that can create connections directly from the newsfeed that allow users to take action. Whether it is to drive to a branded destination such as the brands Facebook brand page or .com, create a quick path to purchase opportunity by linking the image to an e-commerce based product, embed a link to videos that relate to the image, or create additional connections as outlined below.

Today's announcement is a huge addition for those of us who manage Facebook brand properties. Combine this with my recent discussions associated with visual storytelling to drive engagement and you can create a rich experience that can immediately extend the reach of a static image.

With a majority of engagement happening directly from the newsfeed, adding a rich content overlay to images can optimize associations related to the content. The combinations and support possibilities are endless. Whether it's supporting branded content, promotion, acquisition, etc... the flexibility to tag and append content to an image is a great way to maximize story creation and connection throughout an integrated approach across channels.

In November of 2012, Stipple rolled out the ability to support Twitter publishing. From a single Tweet you can surface videos, photos, etc.. in-stream vs pushing to another destination. Adding a rich content overlay through this media is a great way to extend static images, or link to terms & conditions for a Twitter driven promotion, etc...

I first noticed a Stipple execution by IKEA and I immediately saw the potential. The ability to claim attribution, but also create a centralized experience with various access points is something that create additional value for online retailers. I immediately started to tout the benefits to this approach, but there were limitations to social sharing until today. Now with the additional support for Facebook & Twitter, the value of this platform increases exponentially for those who drive owned asset creation & publication.

It's one thing to publish and push content out, but having the ability to measure the engagement and reach of each individual image and the interactions that Stipple creates is another advantage to leveraging this platform. As you can see below, Stipple allows the tracking of engagement and reach so image interactions can be applied into the current KPI's associated with your publishing strategy.

I would definitely recommend evaluating Stipple and the potential impact to your publishing strategy.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

Here is the official announcement from Facebook

The creation of Graph Search is reflective of the current direction of social which is the inevitable convergence of social and search. With so much information being created and limited alignment between traditional search and the social graph, Graph Search could be a key bridge to a new type of search behavior based on relevant and timely socially curated content.

Example of Bing Facebook integration which applied social as an additive to traditional search. Graph Search takes the inverse approach of searching inside of Facebook.

When you begin to dig into the initial information about Graph Search, it is not intended to be a true web search engine like Google or Bing, but an engine that will search out information across all of Facebook and provide personalized answers to queries about people, photos, places & interests.

Here are various examples of the types of searches that can be conducted.

Here is an example of my friends in San Francisco, as well as recommendations of individuals with similar interests in the area.

Here is an example that leverages Friends Check-In's via social graph data to uncover Restaurants that may be of interest when in London

Here is an an example of the capability to search for specific types of photos either that you as a user have liked, or topical such as the recent Red Bull Stratos jump.

The Search Graph is a natural extension of the curation of social graph data. By creating deeper connections across interests and access to crowdsourced information, Facebook will now be enabling a cleaner connection to relevant content beyond simply searching for users, brands and apps.

This immediately jumps to questions of privacy from a users perspective. The current explanation is that the Graph Search will honor your privacy settings and only show information to your friends if your privacy is not set to public.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?

For starters this will eventually play into the Facebook revenue model. Initially this will be an ad free feature, but make no mistake, by further aligning interests with broader behaviors beyond a profile, it will help to further enable personalization as a search and interest overlay and will become an even more accurate tool to re-target relevant ads.

Also, by adding this as a third pillar, Facebook will eventually be able to monetize against Facebook centric search in a similar manner to how Twitter can place ads via search results with their various promoted products.

Here is an example of a Disney Twitter query that immediately ties into the upcoming Hansel & Gretel movie as a paid unit.

From a brand perspective, this will mean more avenues to differentiate via search results. If the users behaviorally adopt the new way to engage with the rich and relevant content within the social graph, then placement upon search category & interest relevance will be at a premium.

Similar to Google Adwords & promotion of Google+ accounts, brand positioning associated with search may become the new premium Facebook units if users adopt the platform.

It will be interesting to see if the existing Facebook recommendation engine will be put into service as the vehicle that enables placement associated with the results of the search. I did recently speak directly with Facebook and confirmed that the current recommendation engine is not a brand controlable asset, meaning it is not currently part of the paid options to insert a brand, it is strictly algorithm based. But with this new development, the recommendation engine may be a critical component to differentiate from the rest and that will most likely come with a cost.

Example of the Facebook Recommendation Engine for Apps

I am certain that this will have a significant impact on Facebook as a platform moving forward. The amount of objects being added to the social graph will continue to scale at an exponential rate as the introduction of action objects (verbs) into the social graph in addition to all of the various pieces of content that create via interactions with Facebook will now be applied to a system that will make connections beyond the individual more feasible and better align individuals and brands.

Building a system that can now quickly mine relevant information that is based on interests and likes vs. traffic is an interesting proposition, especially when applying the overlay of your social graph with real world use cases such as finding a restaurant recommendation in a new city through the platform you already check 20 times a day.

While there was no immediate mobile support announced, previous behavior suggests that this will also further drive the move towards mobile enablement. If you are able to extend your social graph beyond 1:1 interactions to actually leveraging the data while you are on the go, this is an incredibly important addition and one that will have a significant impact on the future of Facebook's mobile ad platform.

It will also be interesting to see if a new algorithm, such as edgerank for the newsfeed, can be organically impacted by the amount of followers to a brand (similar to Google+ recommendations via search) or if other factors such as engagement or virality rates will impact which content types (brand content) will be served.

Example of the EdgeRank Algorithm

Facebook initially has recommended the following:

1) The name, category, vanity URL, and information you share in the "About" section should be up to date.
2) If you have a location or a local place Page, update your address to make sure you can appear as a result when someone is searching for a specific location.

There was also an ominous tease towards other factors defining search results. Some early thoughts are possibly tied to engagement & virality rates. It will be interesting to monitor the progression of Graph Search with no immediate mobile version, no Instagram integration, API's and English only at this stage of the beta, we will monitor the evolution of Graph Search and Facebook SEO.

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After the initial announcements, instead of simply reporting what the changes were, I wanted to see what a month's worth of data would look like to truly gauge the impact that our brands are seeing. Prior to jumping into the results, let's quickly recap how we got to this point.

WHY THE CHANGE?

Here is a quote from Facebook's Q2 earnings call... "Feed quality is crucial in order to not turn off users" - Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook is laser-focused on making sure the integrity of a users newsfeed stays as relevant as possible. With billions of pieces of content being shared, and brands trying to drive organic engagement through content, Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm serves as the overarching authority of what content ultimately gets surfaced to an individual user. Here is a previous post outlining EdgeRank.

Facebook also strives to maintain an 80/20 mix with 80% of the content coming from relevant organic content and the other 20% coming from paid units. The goal is to streamline the newsfeed to reduce the impact of "spammy" messages while seamlessly integrating their paid offerings.

Now with the throttling back of organic brand reach, this may force brands into making decisions about how to proceed.

WHAT IS THE POTENTIAL IMPACT?

Early reports indicated that the new changes take into account the number of individuals who are most likely to take an action on behalf of the brand and removing impressions to users who are less likely to take action such as Like, comment or share. SocialBakers and other groups have reported average post's reach dropped by roughly 50% since September 20th.

Working with Michael Fein, Fanscape's Director of Research & Analytics, we took a cross section of 20 tier 1 accounts over the course of 30 days to gauge the impact before and after the September 20th date. To summarize, it appears that by Facebook tightening their formula, they are giving less reach to an individual brand, but that the reach they are eliminating is the reach that was not converting. We saw a decrease in organic reach, but a slight net increase in virality. (Virality defined as engagements / reach).

That said, we saw organic reach change by -4.3%. Industry reports noted a -6.5% shift. This means, (compared with -6.5%) our decrease was 33% less than the average decrease on Facebook. By following best practices tied to our brands content, we were able to reduce the impact but the fact remains that this change will cause fundamental changes in how we approach engagement rate KPI's and the owned & paid mix.

HOW TO MAXIMIZE THE OPPORTUNITY

After the September 20th change, brands can earn their media or pay for it, or both. In order to drive organic reach, brands will need to continue to focus on an engaging content strategy. To truly maximize content that is driving engagement, paid amplification of content is strongly recommended. Below are recommendations to continue to maximize reach through engagement.

Primary recommendations:

Engaging Content Strategy - This is a best practice and consistently the focus of most Facebook conferences/events/briefings that I have attended. Brands should provide contextual quality/relevant content grounded in the social persona of the brand. According to Facebook, content should be as compelling as information shared by friends and family to break through the clutter.

One strategy that we have seen be very effective is to be very deliberate in the creation of a branded content calendar. This includes developing content buckets that are a direct extension of the social brand persona. Segmenting content by type makes it even easier to track the impact of each type of content and provides consistency & diversity of content. This includes following best practices tied to time of posting as well as mixing UGC with relevant branded content.

Here is an example of a brand campaign extension from Snickers. This content would fall in a "branded content bucket". It is visually interesting and extends the new "Horseless Headsman" Halloween campaign. Other forms of content could be tied to polls/trivia, pop-culture or brand partnerships. Again, each content bucket is grounded in the core attributes of the brands social persona (voice).

Paid Amplification - We have worked with Facebook directly on a number of campaigns and our focus prior to the September 20th change has been to create relevant and engaging content that resonates with our brands fans. Prior to the change, we had also begun to experiment with creating engagement thresholds tied to content "events" that can trigger amplification of content.

An event is any piece of organic content that receives a high amount of engagement. We then work to create a virality rate that ultimately becomes a threshold for organic content. Once the threshold has been exceeded the content can become a part of the paid Facebook inventory for a brand. This strategy ensures that the content that is most likely to drive engagement is amplified to maximize reach. This also allows for acquisition beyond the core base as the paid components allow affinity targeting beyond the current user base.

Here is an example of how it can work. This is a post from the AT&T On The Way To Saturday campaign. By driving engagement levels past a certain point, for this example if the post exceeded 1000+ likes, it could then be considered for amplification in the model mentioned above with increased targeting tied to college football even more specific, University of Georgia fans.

Here is another example that shows an organic brand post that has been amplified. Note the clear call to action to share. This is another important element tied to driving sharability and engagement with content.

Secondary Recommendations:

Targeted Content - I had recently wrote about the new targeting abilities tied to posting content. A quick recap, brands now have the unique ability to target beyond language and location and focus more on demographic and interest targeting. Targeting content is going to prove to be a very valuable asset in brands content strategies moving forward. The ability to speak directly to certain audience segments on the post level can have greater impact if the content is relevant to the target. By targeting/personalizing the content to the segment can lead to greater engagement rates which leads to increased organic reach based on engaged content amplifying through a users friends.

Facebook Branded Groups - I recently wrote about the potential benefits of Facebook Branded Groups that are currently in Beta. Branded groups can provide many benefits for a brand, including the ability to further segment and target messaging, either by group topic or content within a group.

One of the key benefits to leveraging branded groups is the fact that when a brand posts to a group that user is subscribed to, the content updates show up directly in a users Facebook notifications. This is one of the only ways that branded content can show up in a users notifications outside of the brand directly interacting with the user. Note that the Facebook Brand Groups are in beta and require the assistance of your Facebook rep.

Interest Lists - One additional method to drive greater visibility of branded content is to direct users to action to see a majority of a brands posts. When a user hovers over the "Like" button on a brand page, they will see a drop-down menu. On this list they can be directed to ”ADD TO INTEREST LISTS”. The user can then create an interest list to ensure content associated with this interest is given a stronger weighting. This obviously puts the onus on the user to take action to maintain visibility of your content.

Even though organic reach has been somewhat throttled, virality rates are increasing for content that does get served. But note that more effort may be required to meet Reach KPI's that were set prior to September 20th. Be sure to re-evaluate your KPI's and client expectations, focus on creating engaging & contextually relevant content and strongly consider amplifying content that exceeds certain engagement thresholds.

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Now that the news has been unveiled, let's take a deeper look at the Twitter Interest Graph and it's potential impact for our clients. With 140 million users and strong international growth, further developing their ad platform was an obvious next step to drive increased value and offer additional opportunities to monetize their brand relationships.

Currently, the promoted tweets product was focused primarily on amplifying messages to users who were either already following a particular brand or a similar association as deemed by Twitter. Now by introducing the ability to target promoted tweets via other factors such as location and now interests, this opens up the landscape for brands to capitalize on growth and awareness goals that were simply not feasible until now.

An example of this would be American Airlines. Currently, AA could use a promoted tweet to target it's 415,000 followers or people deemed similar by Twitter. Now, AA could essentially target new users based on interests tied to travel or destinations.

Google has it's Google Knowledge Graph, Facebook it's Social Graph and now Twitter has it's Twitter Interest Graph. This graph, based on 25 top level and 300+ second level "interest categories" in addition to custom interest segments, uses asymmetrical real-time signals by users to drive the correlation with a users interests. In layman's terms, Facebook shows a direct relationship between an interest and a user via a Like. Twitter takes other signals such as who an individual follows as well as your retweets to make associations of interest. This is also an extension of the logic used by the "who to follow" suggestions on your Twitter homepage.

From an earned media perspective, this definitely changes the game when it comes to driving value from Twitter. I cannot go into the details of the models discussed, but know that based on actual Twitter data the value of a campaign over the course of multiple years is extremely positive.

From a data standpoint, it is still unclear how this data will extend beyond the ad platform. With Facebook's social graph, we have access to 180 points of data if authorized by the user that includes interest level data. This is incredibly powerful information to create highly relevant experiences and spark action on behalf of a user. As it stands now, and this could change as the graph evolves but today, the data is primarily tied to insights associated with paid campaigns.

Example of Facebook's Social Graph data points

This is a great next step for Twitter as it continues to evolve it's platform from simple utility for brands to becoming a major factor in not only impacting real-time and topical events, but harnessing the true power of it's 140 million users and more closely associate brand goals with better targeting options to truly maximize opportunities.

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One such item is how organizations incorporate social elements into their e-mail marketing campaigns. This is relevant as organizations that leverage both e-mail marketing & social channels tend to receive better results for their campaigns according to a report from Vertical Response. This strong correlation can be further amplified by fine tuning the social enablement of the actual messaging.

If you review branded e-mail marketing campaigns you will see inconsistency in how social sharing is enabled. The goal should not be to drive awareness that the channel exists, but to create frictionless sharability of the content and in some cases to also provide relevantly targeted messaging based on the users social graph data.

There are multiple buckets that brands across multiple verticals fall into when representing social connectivity via e-mail.

1) The Social Chicklet - Many brands follow the rule of just adding a socially enabled chicklets to the top or bottom navigation of communication. While paying homage to the brands owned channels, the actual engagement on this style of placement is lower than other methods.

Playstation as well as a majority of brands that reference social channels in this manner go with the approach of simply providing visibility into the fact that their channels exist. There is however a missed opportunity to share the message itself or specific content segments that are worthy of sharing.

2) The Social Call Out - The second level of integration takes the social chicklet & applies a direct call to action that is specific to the desired channel. This at the very least calls out to the user that a certain action needs to be taken that may drive additional value to the user.

In the example below, Fandango provides specific calls to action on what they would like for the user to do with the referenced social channels. FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook

Here are other examples from Eddie Bauer which leverages the facebook share call to action, Macys & Red Envelope.

3) Socially Enabled Content - Xbox deploys a strategy that not only calls attention to their specific channels but also the ability to directly share the content of the e-mail, they also take special care to socially enable each individual content block for maximum sharability.

4) Socially Centric Communication - Some brands have invested efforts to provide communication that directly highlights their social channels and how users can benefit from engaging directly with their channels. The benefit to this approach is that individuals consume different types of information across different channels. By highlighting the benefits that their social channels provide, they are potentially driving the user to action to associate with the brands owned social channels. It is also possible to track the organic growth associated with the call to action to test the impact of the campaign as some brands e-mail databases triple their current fans/followers, etc...

Below is an example from CORT that highlights an individual receiving value and drives a targeted message about a potential value exchange from engaging via their social channel.

Pizza Hut dedicated an e-mail message touting the value of becoming a member by leveraging their current network size, teasing with potential exclusives.

5) Socially Relevant - One of the bigger opportunities for brands is associated with the adoption of social sign on & leveraging open graph data to drive highly targeted recommendations and communication. In my recent post I wrote about the benefits of social sign on and open graph.

From an e-mail standpoint, the ability to pull in relevant open graph elements to further drive socially enabled gifting, such as birthday reminders and socially optimized wish lists come to forefront. These principles can then be applied to driving socially relevant and targeted messaging to drive a user to take action on behalf of either themselves or their closest friends.

Example of how Old Navy could further socially enable a post purchase e-mail

By taking the time to consider how to truly socially optimize e-mail marketing, a brand can truly capitalize on the permissive nature of their users to share their content vs. vaguely eluding to the fact that the brand has social channels.

On a final note, socially enabled sharing when it comes to retail shopping experiences are key across the prime millennial & gen x targets when it comes to point #3 below.

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In recent conversations with Klout’s Garth Holsinger, he provided insight into the release of brand pages for Klout. “Previously, a brand was treated like an individual user, which in some cases does not necessarily make the most sense as a Klout score for a brand should mean something different.”

With today's release, Garth's words ring true in that the new squad pages uncover the top influencers associated with the brand (topic) as well as showcasing the latest Red Bull content and providing a platform for the brand to directly reward influencers with brand centric perks.

Below is an example of the initial beta for the new Red Bull squad page

This presents an interesting dynamic for brands, as they are able to reward those individuals that are already passionate about the brand vs. pushing content to individuals to consume. By aligning influencers directly with the brand, it provides an easy point of connection between brand & influencer.

The example below showcases the top 1000 influencers tied to the topic of Red Bull

The top influencers are determined by +K's which are given to other users who are influential around specific topics. Note that +K's are specific to the Klout platform meaning, users who are already engaged with Klout directly are influencing the allocation of +K's vs. simply using a users Klout score. This is a key point to consider for brands looking to solely use Klout squads as a primary influencer identification & engagement channel.

Top influencers also have an opportunity to receive news associated with the brand as well as access to brand perks that are centralized within the topical brand page vs. the normal perks location via the navigation.

Normally, perks are exclusive products or experiences that users can earn based on their overall influence tied to their Klout score that are distributed to select influencers based on their topics of authority, location & score. With the introduction of squads, a secondary level of perk associated with topic specific influencers are also available. I have a request in to Klout to confirm if the topical perks are also associated with a premium cost similar to the existing perks program.

This is a significant step forward for Klout as it creates a more relevant experience for brands vs. treating brands as an individual and applying the Klout algorithm solely based on the brands published content. This new model makes more sense from a brand perspective. It will be interesting to see how the topically driven influencers begin to align as the system is predicated on klout's proprietary +K's.

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In February I wrote about the importance of Social Sign-On for brands. Paul's presentation reinforced this message and also provided additional insight into 3 fundamental shifts that are key factors to what is quickly becoming the next iteration of the web.

1) The web is being rebuilt around people
2) Amount of information we can access is increasingly exponential
3) Information is everywhere but our physiological capacity to process information has remained the same

From a marketing standpoint, these shifts also represent a fundamental change in how we as marketers should approach campaign strategy as well as the design of brand sites moving forward.

Lets consider the initial statement "The web is fundamentally being rebuilt around people". Think about how Facebook has redefined how you as an individual represent your virtual persona. You show affinity towards brands via Likes, your opinion and interaction with others are the keys to fueling the algorithm that shows you the most relevant content. You select the types of content that you interact with from the sources that you deem have value. In essence, you are now in control.

The side effect to this control is that you are also providing extensive amounts of data via your social graph that now allow for more personalized experiences across the web.

Web experiences have evolved from the early dot com days of simply repurposing marketing materials to becoming more interactive by nature. The web as it stands today, represents incremental innovation when it comes to true integration of social with branded web sites. Strategies today involve "bolting on" social features. This meets a basic need of interconnection, but the brands who will truly capitalize on the next iteration of the web will provide a social by design approach that drives frictionless and relevant engagement to its users.

Examples of this concept are beginning to appear across the web as more organizations begin to adopt open graph principles into their brand presence. One example is Etsy. When you initially look at a site such as Etsy, you see a standard web presence that could be any commerce driven site that you have seen before. The site puts the onus on the user to drill down via categories or assuming the user knows what they are searching for.

By leveraging Open Graph, Etsy is able to create an experience that is incredibly relevant to the end user and their friends by quickly analyzing their Likes & affinities and presenting items that may be of interest. This frictionless discovery increases purchase intent by quickly surfacing items that may be immediately relevant.

An even richer experience is being provided by Amazon's new Facebook open graph driven beta.

Amazon has been at the forefront of surfacing relevant items based on purchase history. Their relevancy algorithm's have been a foundational element of their success over the years. It is very telling that they have recently launched a beta that further integrates a users social graph data to provide additional levels of recommendation.

The Amazon Facebook beta experience quickly scans the LIkes of the user as well as the social graph data of their friends to surface targeted recommendations that are based on interaction by friends as well as actual amazon purchase.

By adding additional utility in terms of gift giving for friends and discoverability of wish-lists, a user quickly has access to items that their friends may be truly interested in receiving.

The process of leveraging social graph data to streamline the path to purchase exemplifies the potential of social graph enabled social commerce. Social commerce should be less about seeding products via social channels, and more about creating seamless experiences that are permissible to end users vs. trying to interrupt. More on the topic of interruptive vs. permissive marketing based on this model in a future post.

The relevant web is also incredibly important based on the statements associated with the amount of information that is available as well as our capacity to comprehend information. With the exponential growth of information and choices, our dependency on our closest bonds to help us process information becomes even more relevant.

By enabling relevant experiences that users can seamlessly engage with, the ability for brands to capitalize on these fundamental shifts become fully realized. Those that embrace the social graph and redesign their brand presence to seamlessly integrate with social channels vs. simply bolting on features will realize greater returns.

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By pinning the contest, Red Bull is highlighting the campaign for 7 days and ensures that any user that drops onto their timeline is met with an inviting opportunity to join the hunt. Terms and conditions are linked to an app that houses the rules of the contest.

Here is the app housing the terms & conditions. Note that canvas apps now have a width of 810 px.

Step 1 - The initial clue called for a user to go back to the 1st Red Bull ever sold. The next step was to identify the date on the bottom of the can for the next clue.

Step 2 - By applying an Instagram type filter and a clue to "look outside the box" the next date was revealed as part of the image frame.

Step 3 - Next, Red Bull pulled in a Spotify play-list image to unlock the next clue.

Step 4 - This clue took a moment as the border states this is a clue. Pull up the image and step back and "clear your mind" and the next date is revealed.

Step 5 - This clue took the longest for me to work through. Driven by a clue by Red Bull in the comments RE: CAPS, I took the first capped letters in the message to unveil the phrase "Find the Timecodes". This referenced the 4 images below and the time in the YouTube video where they appear to reveal the next date.

Step 6 - This clues photo was tagged with "Anna Graham" and the comment clue was "a rag man" or anagram. Which is simply a puzzle to unscramble the words to form a new phrase. By taking the clues I was able to unlock the final clue.

Step 7 - The final step proved to be the most difficult of the 7 as it was based on clues using prime numbers combined with the final clue of 2=a & 3=x to decipher the final location of the Timeline Timewarp web-site along with the password to complete the scavenger hunt.

The answer to the final question was to take the letters that matched the prime numbers of the final clue. This revealed the secret URL that took you to the final stage.

Once you decipher the last riddle you are taken to a "secret" landing page for one final challenge

Yes, I won a prize!!!

Here is the confirmation response from Red Bull's media department.

The level of complexity associated with the hunt and the true integration into elements of timeline made the experience fun and engaging, but I question the duration of engagement for the average consumer to stay engaged throughout. I would love to see the level of fall-off at each given stage of the promotion.

You can tell some people really enjoyed the challenge

Regardless, it is the first example of a compelling brand promotion leveraging Timeline.

Instead of going into a lot of detail out of the gate, I am changing the normal format and going with a more visual representation of changes as well as guidelines for some of the changes based on the roll-out of my Facebook Timeline Brand Page.

Below is an example of the Legacy posts / Brand Milestones. Note the ability to append location & date and to post current & back-dated updates without pushing into the newsfeed. Also note that milestones will appear as full-page width updates vs. the staggered approach used for regular updates.

Once the milestone is published, you have the option to "pin the post" to create a semi-static piece of content towards the top of your brand timeline. Pins can be stories, photos, videos, campaigns, tab cross promotion, contests, etc... this is handy for promotions and highlighting key events or even simply highlighting your fan of the week. Once you have pinned a piece of content it has a "bookmark" signifying that it has been pinned.

Example of a pinned post

In future posts we will explore the ins and outs of the changes as well as what happened to custom landing pages as well as Like gating. But for now enjoy the visuals.

YAN is an even bigger issue when combined with the fact that 88% of online buyers had at some point intentionally left registration information blank or used incorrect information when signing up for a new account, up 12% from 2010. Also, the expectation of consumers for brands to support Social Sign-On has increased significantly as eMarketer and Janrain recently reported that consumer desire for Social Sign-On has increased to 77% of US Online Buyers in 2011.

The importance of leveraging a single sign on authentication platform that is socially enabled becomes the key to unlocking a brands social CRM strategy. The reason for this is that Social Sign-On can lower the barrier of entry for a user, increase validity of data via the users social graph as well as increase stay rates.

According to recent research from Gigya, web users who log into 3rd party sites with Facebook's Graph API spend 50% more time on those sites, and view twice as many pages. Think about the impact to a Fortune 500 retailer with 50% increase in stay rates and how that may impact purchase frequency.

When it comes to selecting which service is ideal for your brand, Gigya also released information that shows that Facebook accounts for 61% of those social logins.

Where social sign on really gets interesting is when a brand leverages an OAuth solution, such as Facebook's Graph API. Instead of depending on a user to input a few sets of pre-determined data, you potentially have access to 180 data points to associate with the user. This includes the ability to access data tied to their feed, friends, activities, interests, music, books, movies, television, likes, checkins and more based on the users privacy settings.

This increases the probability of accurate subscriber data as well as the ability to append your proprietary questions on the back-end of the authorization of the user. Users in this scenario are more likely to share information as they are not repeating the information process. This also means that for a brand, the ability to build a robust profile around an individual beyond the standard data points such as basic demographic data and purchase history becomes a reality.

One of the more progressive brands when it comes to Social Sign-On is Nike.

Nike offers multiple options for authentication.

When you choose to login via Facebook, look at the data that Nike gains access to in one session...

A possible user scenario is as follows. Nike is about to become the uniform provider for the NFL in the upcoming 2012 season. Imagine if Nike had the ability to quickly scan the profile data of those who have authenticated via social sign-on and find team & athlete related Likes, game Checkin's from the last season (Timeline makes this even easier), team related status updates, etc... tied to the users NFL team & players of choice. They would be able to proactively target those users with highly targeted and relevant offerings around the upcoming seasons jerseys and other merchandise that the user would then be compelled to engage.

This solution combined with other integrated tactics would most likely net better results than engaging in a mass e-mail/traditional campaign. Moving forward, the brands that understand how to leverage the immense amounts of data that individuals are providing via their social graph and then create relevant & highly targeted outreach campaigns will be the brands that will capitalize on socially enabled commerce.

As e-marketer shows below, in 2012 $3 billion in goods will be sold via social media this number jumps to $14 billion by 2015.

The key to this trend is not just positioning products via social channels, but lowering the barrier of entry, mapping CRM & social graph elements as well as highly targeted, relevant and timely offers via social & traditional channels.

The brands that understand how to better integrate their CRM programs with Social Graph data to create robust user profiles that are then the basis for executing their marketing strategy will be the winners.

It should be noted that integration of SSO is a cross departmental effort and this is one of the primary reasons more fortune 500 organizations have not adopted this method. It will take visionary executives who understand the value of data integration to push SSO forward.

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Mobile gaming appears to be an ideal target for brand engagement as 70-80% of all mobile downloads are games with the average iPhone user spending 14.7 hours a month playing those games. Currently, 64.5 million people in the US played mobile casual games at least once a month. This will rise to 94.9 million in the US by 2014. Translation people are gaming via mobile.

Has anyone not played Angry Birds?

The issue at this point in time is that the current landscape is highly scattered with over 72,000 games in the Apple App store from thousands of developers and in-app advertising leaving many brands frustrated with their mobile engagement rates.

One newly launched service is looking to change the game by promising higher user engagement rates combined with positive brand associations. P4RC, Inc. is a new service that connects consumer brands to mobile users with a platform that converts user engagement in their favorite gaming apps into P4RC points, which can be redeemed for real-world rewards.

The basic premise is that players play games they are already playing and earn gift cards from top retailers just for playing.

The key for P4RC brand programs is the ability for brands to reach across multiple games and reward behaviors that users are already engaged in.

P4RC's brand programs include sponsoring their "Race to Win" segments, which call for users to play and earn P4RC points within a period of time to redeem brand rewards as well as offers directly from brands.

Example of Race to Win

Example of Brand Offer

"By sponsoring our Race 2 Win competitions, brands can be inserted into the mobile gaming experience in a manner that is actually relevant to that experience. This makes the brand part of the fun rather than an unwanted intrusion, which is often the case with other forms of mobile advertising" said Jason Seldon, Founder & CEO of P4RC.

By integrating the achievement network completely within the game, the barrier of leaving the app for a mobile web experience is removed. The user is free to review current Race's 2 win, redeem rewards and view their account all within the current app they are playing.

In the first week of launch, players have already redeemed their P4RC points for over $1,000 in rewards from brands such as Starbucks & Best Buy.

At launch, P4RC's achievement network is currently tied to "Stop Those Fish", which is featured by Apple as a New & Noteworthy app in the Apple App Store and announced a partnership with Eye Interactive to include the new P4RC rewards network in all Eye Interactive games.

P4RC is also forming key partnerships with mobile developers. "By adding the P4RC rewards network to their games, game developers benefit from a powerful marketing & customer retention engine that drives user engagement, resulting in an increase in game downloads and longer duration of game play."

Services such as P4RC provide compelling incentives for brands and users alike by rewarding existing mobile behaviors, socially enabling the experience and lowering the barrier of entry to participate across apps.

An Android friendly version of P4RC will be launching this Summer.

Thanks to Jason Seldon, Founder & CEO of P4RC for data included in this post.

Much has been written about Klout since it's founding in 2008. Some praise & swear by the service, others question the validity of the score and ability to "game" the system. Regardless, users work each day to increase their Klout score and brands are eager to reward those indiviuduals.

At it's core, Klout provides social media analytics to measure a user's influence across their social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Foursquare, and many more and assigns a score to the user. This daily score is meant to reflect the influence that individual has to drive action in social networks.

Currently, Klout boasts over 100 million profiles, 2.7 billion+ pieces of content & connections analyzed daily and 5,000+ partners & developers with over 45 billion+ API calls.

From a brand perspective, there are multiple ways to leverage this data and audience to drive action. From the Klout Perks program, to leveraging Klout's API to the upcoming Klout brand pages.

Klout Perks - The most visible brand programs associated with Klout is tied to Klout perks. Perks are exclusive products or experiences that users can earn based on their influence. Perks are distributed to select influencers based on their topics of authority, location & score.

This summer, I was associated with a perk from Disney to attend a pre-screening of Winnie the Pooh. Being a dad of 3 young children it served as a great opportunity to provide a unique experience for our entire family.

Influencers who receive Perks can choose to talk about the perk/product or not but the thought here is that by enabling the product or experience, the influencer will feel compelled to share the perk with their network as I did with the Winnie the Pooh perk.

Examples of Klout perks offered previously include:

Chilis: Gift cards to try "Lighter Choices" menu items as well as a Chili's 2 for $20 Steak dinner
Hyundai: Integrating their Social & Gaming activation with VIP tickets to their Veloster Gaming event.
PopChips: Samples of 6 different flavors mailed to recipients
Contraband Movie: Driving Sweeps activation via Influencers

Perk programs are categorized by Entertainment, Experiences, Food & Beverages, Retail, Sports & Technology. For a brand, Perk programs can enable new product launches, sampling programs, experiential entertainment and more. Affordably priced, brand perk programs are the most direct way to activate against the 100+ million Klout profiles.

Klout API - With over 5,000+ partners and developers, Klout's API is leveraged by brands for multiple purposes. With Klout's API, you can glean data such as Klout Score, which is the most used API, or specific sets of data tied to topics such as "Marketing" or "Facebook" and unveil up to 5 topics tied to users.

There are some requirements to fully maximize the API, such as in order to request a Klout score for someone through the API, you have to have their Twitter ID. This is key for brands developing their Social CRM programs. A brand may want to map existing data into Klout's API and the brand should account for capturing Twitter handles as part of their social data mining strategy.

Some brands are using Klout's API data in innovative ways, One example is CapitalOne. They leveraged the Klout API to accelerate users in their loyalty program. They offered bonus rewards to users based on their Klout scores. This means everyone who participates with a Klout score between 10-100 gets some form of bonus rewards based on their influence.

The API presents unique and compelling data that brands can leverage to drive engagement & target key topical influencers to drive action or reward and accelerate via loyalty programs.

Klout Brand Pages - In recent conversations with Klout's Garth Holsinger, he provided insight into the upcoming February release of Brand Pages for Klout. "Currently, a brand is treated like an individual user, which in some cases does not necessarily make the most sense as a Klout score for a brand should mean something different."

With Klout Brand Pages, brands will have an opportunity to build influencers groups that are related to their specific industry. An example for a brand such as American Airlines would be able to associate with specific topics such as travel and interact directly with those influencers.

Brands will be able to show their content & streams and also show the most influential content about American Airlines. Elements such as Facebook comment engagement, Retweets, etc.. will aggregate into Klout brand pages and the brand will have an aggregation point of influencers to drive direct communication. Premium levels will be available for brands to subscribe to for additional outreach capabilities.

I will follow up with a deeper dive into Klout brand pages once the service launches in February.

Thanks goes to Garth Holsinger of Klout as well as Brad Alesi of The Marketing Arm for data points included in this post.

From This...

To This...

Chances are that you have either downloaded, used, heard about or seen Shazam in action as it is available for both iOS & Android. With over 150 million users and 45 million installs on smartphones & tablets in the US, the potential reach is impressive. Boosted along the way by great reviews, exposure via Starbucks App pick of the week and continually adding new features to the ever evolving product roadmap, Shazam is quickly moving from simply being a music identification service to a player in the digital activation space.

Shazam's recent Starbucks Pick of the Week. Yes, I may have grabbed more than one....

With a recent investment of 32 million dollars, Shazam is aggressively extending the platform to support different forms of digital activation & engagement. Key changes in their model such as allowing unlimited tagging of content across all levels of their offering and strategic partnerships with NBC Universal properties has led to new features that support entertainment based tagging vs. simply tagging music.

In other words TV Spot + Shazamable Call to Action + User Tagging = Digital Activation.

By now you may have seen one of the many Shazamable ads or shows that highlights the Shazam icon placed strategically on the screen for a period of time. Initially, you may be thinking "why would I want to shazam this commercial"? Case in point, this recent Marshall's ad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Notice the Shazam marker in the lower right

The app then uses it's spectrogram based audio footprint of the ad to identify and launch the tagged content. Instead of the standard artist & song information, the experience shifts to become the direct response launch point of branded experiences. Now Shazam supports driving a user to a branded destination as well as enable social connections with the brand, or push to an e-commerce offering. The opportunities to create an engaging digital experience is now viable by simply tagging an ad or show with the app.

Without a doubt in 2012 you will see the rise of Shazamable ads. With 150 million user reach and the fact that the second screen is becoming a mainstay to our television viewing experiences, brands & NBC Universal partners will look to Shazam as a means to drive digital interaction directly from your primary screen with the hopes of either enhancing the viewing experience or incenting users to engage with branded destinations.

The biggest barrier at this time is the stigma that Shazam is primarily a music identification service. Work will need to be done to continue to educate the 150 million current and future users that the app is going beyond figuring out what the cool song was in the latest Apple ad to that ad now creating additional digital touchpoints and the ability to buy the featured product via the app and oh by the way still tell you what the name of the song was as well.

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With a slew of launch partners such as Best Buy, American Express, Dell, GE, Nike, Heineken, Disney and more, Twitter is following in the footsteps of Google's recent roll-out of Google+ brand pages.

One of the primary reasons for the roll-out is to better support advertisers. According to eMarketer, Twitter's global ad revenue is projected to reach $139.5 million in 2011 and approach $399 million in 2013.

By creating branded destinations vs. simply aggregating content, advertisers may engage in more robust programs via Twitter if the possibility to drive additional engagement with specific content over longer periods of time becomes a consistent option.

What is the value for a brand to embrace the change? Here are 5 feature benefits of the new Twitter Brand pages.

1) Customizable Headers | Brands have the ability to further express their essence with a larger profile image and a customizable header.

In the Pepsi example below, they take a creative approach to their header

2) Promoted Tweet | Brands have the opportunity to control the message visitors see when they first come to the profile page via a promoted tweet at the top of the timeline.

The "Top Tweet" becomes a showcase opportunity to drive additional engagement on relevant content, be it promotional, educational, etc.. without the risk of being lost in the timeline.

3) Auto Expand Embedded Content | Promoted content will also go beyond simple links and actually show the content, if it is a video, etc… top tweet will auto-expand to reveal photos or videos from various sources.

4) Optimized Moderation | - The update now allows brands to separate their @ replies & mentions. This will be extremely useful for those that manage the day-to-day engagement on behalf of brands. Users also have a nice option to speak directly to the brand with the new layout with the "Tweet to Brand" option directly under the header.

5) Advertising Performance | Twitters advertising offerings have grown considerably over the last year. With options tied to promoted tweets, accounts & profiles. By creating additional opportunities to drive dwell time on a branded destination, in theory the opportunity to drive additional impressions and clicks becomes greater.

The one issue I have initially is related to how Twitter content is consumed. With a large number of individuals consuming their tweets via platforms outside of Twitter directly & TweetDeck, it will be interesting to see if there is more of an emphasis to not only follow a particular brand, but to also drive directly to their branded presence when specific campaigns are in action.

There is already a fast growing list brands positioning their pages from Fox News to the Dallas Cowboys.

Here is the direct link to create a Google+ brand page

For now the functionality closely mirrors that of the consumer Google+ experience with the exception of the Google+ Direct Connect option. Google+ Direct Connect allows your Google+ brand page to show in a Google search by simply having the user search +BrandName

The Hangouts option provides a new twist on transparency as you can support a F2F live chat with up to 9 people at one time. It will be interesting to see how creative brands can be with Hangouts and what potential policies will be put into place to manage that process.

More to come on the features and functions available for Google+ brand pages in future posts.

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