Social Media Networks

Today we announced the release of a new integration for Reality Digital's social media platform: Facebook Connect. This feature enables users to log into Reality Digital-powered online social networking sites with their Facebook ID and immediately begin sharing content and activity between the two social media networks.



Many companies are exploring how to effectively run a social media campaign on Facebook but social networking marketing is so much more than than just advertising on the world's most popular social network. A number of our customers have successfully executed campaigns where general awareness built on public social networks like Facebook drive traffic back to a branded community site where members can more deeply engage with niche content and interact with other users who have like-minded interests.

Our Facebook Connect Integration enables Reality Digital customers to lower the barrier to entry by allowing users to immediately log in with their Facebook credentials, skipping registration and reducing the notion of "registration fatigue". Users then have full access to the site and can begin interacting with other members and content within that niche community. Sharing between the two social networks is easy. Users have the option to share activity and comments with their Facebook friends anytime they upload media, post a comment, write a blog post or create an event.

This cross-activity benefits the customer in several ways:

• Extends campaign reach and increases community membership
• Syndicates brand or community's content to a larger public social network and extends its life
• Encourages viral distribution of content and return traffic
• Increases audience for and engagement with branded content
• Driving eyeballs and turning more page views for incremental ad revenue (if monetizing via advertising of course)

Overall, Reality Digital's Facebook Connect Integration makes it easier for people to discover and engage with your community by facilitating a seamless connection between the two communities. In return it makes it easier for community site owners to reach a greater critical mass and be able to monetize that. 

Does a cross-social network strategy that Facebook Connect enables have a place in your social media campaign? Leave a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts and any instances of implementation, successful or not.

There is something odd about the rabid enthusiasm many creative and brand agencies have for social media as a critical component of an effective brand strategy, while they simultaneously express their concern for putting a current campaign into play today.

I know, I know - its the economy and everyone is worried that they are going to mistake the signs of a possible recovery and move too fast, or too slowly, and risk making things worse. Me too! Anyone who runs a company or has a job with decision making responsibility is freaked because we cannot accurately predict what might happen to our buyers confidence over the next 6 months. But there are things that I can guarantee. We all still have employees who come to work every day and have to do some kind of work to move the company forward. If you are in marketing, or digital strategy, or brand management, or an agency, it is likely that you are charged with finding a creative and cost effective way to improve brand image or promote better customer engagement or satisfaction. Which means that you need to make SOME decision about what you want to do for your customers or your company. And faced with that reality, making a decision that is cost effective and gets a social media community up and running quickly and flexibly to provide more effective brand engagement makes a great deal of sense.

At the iMedia Agency Summit in Brighton yesterday, Rob Proctor (Head of EMEA for Reality Digital) and I had the great pleasure of talking with many different agencies who are wrestling with how to close this very gap. Which is why they were tremendously pleased with the announcement and demonstration of Harmony, our new social media platform that gives tremendous flexibility in brand-safe site creation at a very affordable cost. It was gratifying to see that by addressing the twin issues of cost and control, many agencies are more than ready to immediately engage in social media campaigns on behalf of their customers. In fact, it appears they have been waiting for just such an opportunity.

The conference, overall, was very interesting, with a higher-than-I-expected ration of agency professionals to vendors. The conversations and presentations were engaging, and everyone reports to be seeing a much greater interest from prospects and clients over the past weeks, leading to an increase in sales figures projected for May. In fact, it seems that using social media networks and consumer generated content campaigns as a means to jump-start and re-enthuse marketers is gaining considerable attention. It made for a very busy and exciting week in London!

Times are tough. With the economy in a tailspin, companies are hunkering down, guarding their bottom line, cutting costs and laying off workers. Despite the challenges, companies can’t afford to risk losing customers. Now more than ever, they need to adopt compelling brand strategies to win customers and differentiate themselves from the competition. In other words, they need to do more with less. And just when they’ve got it figured out—that marketing matters in a down economy—they’re faced with the reality that the same old channels for communicating their messaging simply don’t work like they used to.

For decades companies have focused their advertising, marketing and promotions strategies on delivering the right message to the right audience and leveraging a limited number of well-established communication channels, like TV or print, to foster an enduring bond between their brands and customers. But these tried-and-true strategies alone won’t help companies get ahead in today’s world.

To remain relevant, companies must tap into the power of social media networks to enhance and extend their existing marketing campaigns. Brand-sponsored or brand-created social media communities create compelling new avenues for brand loyalty and customer interaction. These communities allow the marketer to communicate clearly, regularly, and honestly with consumers, while at the same time improving the brand identity and creating a level of interest and trust.

There are huge opportunities for companies that can adapt to the changing marketing model. For more information, download our white paper on building online communities in a down economy.

Recently the World Economic Forum launched a number of new several social media tools and is inviting web users to discuss key issues on the economy, US politics, business ethics and the environment, is this a nod to the growing importance of social media or just a gimmick?

WEF is coordinating discussions on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and an OpenForum wiki, as well as a photo group on Flickr and corporate streaming video hosting on its own WEF website. Also press conferences are being broadcast live through Mogulus and Qik. We have to ask the question: Is this genuine dialogue or some form of scary business social management of the many by the few? A grand attempt by the people who got us in to this mess to look all warm and fuzzy!

The forum has also opened corporate branding channel on YouTube channel for the second year and will pick some of the most popular comments from the corporate community social network channel and broadcast them during sessions at next year's events.

WEF's social media corporate branding initiative builds on the YouTube channel run last year, which recorded more than 5m video views in the six weeks leading up to the 2007 WEF forum, and drew responses from Israeli president Shimon Peres and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who responded to questions at the Google-owned video-sharing website's stand in Davos.

This year WEF will also pick one contributor from its corporate community social network to attend the forum in person, judging videos by the numbers of views they draw, their originality and creativity, and by how well they answer one of four key questions.

Users are being asked: how confident they feel about global growth in 2009; to what extent environmental issues will be sidelined by the economic crisis; what their expectations are of incoming US president Barack Obama's administration; and whether company executives should abide by a similar code of ethics to lawyers and doctors.

The successful contributor will be invited to attend the WEF forum with all expenses paid and will cover the event as a citizen reporter, posting coverage on the YouTube Davos channel.

The WEF's social media network project is the latest in a series of initiatives by YouTube as it focuses on more heavyweight political events. The site ran a debate last year with CNN in which 2,300 video questions were sent to Democrat candidates for the presidential nomination, while the equivalent Republican debate attracted 4.49 million viewers to CNN.

Does this mean that social media has grown up and that ordinary people’s views are being taken seriously or that political marketers are getting more web savvy and are deploying business social management tools as a control mechanisms for the masses? Probably both, but as long as the machine is asking, it would seem childish not to answer!

Time will tell if the pull opinion seekers will win, over the mainstream push practitioners, but one thing is still for sure – most media spend is still going on channels that talk to us, rather than with us. We can only hope that the trend to open conversations will grow and grow.