A Facebook presence is becoming an increasingly complex part of a marketers strategy to understand an engage with fans and customers alike.  Clearly the objective is not to start a page and hope fans will find you.  Because as we all know, hope is not a strategy. You need to plan for success. It is important to understand the unique aspects of Facebook’s functionality to deliver the best experience for your fans which should beget more fans. Facebook can help drive brand awareness, loyalty, engagement, and ultimately, benefit to your bottom line.

Having a seat at the table with clients for the last 4 years, below is a 3-step condensed reference guide for using Facebook as a strategic marketing channel:

Step 1 – Develop a Creative Brief: Take the good ole fashioned creative brief, and make it work for you in social media.  Here are a few questions you should ask as you develop your strategy:

• Why do you want to be on Facebook? (And the answer isn’t because everyone is doing it!)
• What role will Facebook play for the brand or business?  Customer loyalty? Customer service?  Product development?  Drive awareness of new sales or special offers? A hybrid?  Nail this down – it will matter in every aspect going forward.
• What type of business are you?  Who are your target customers?  Are there new voices you want to engage with to expand or maximize your understanding of their needs?
• How expansive is your current digital strategy?  How does social media fit into your marketing mix and budget – and consider the priority of Facebook to determine budgets, timing, manpower, etc
• Who will be handling the administrative aspects and ongoing communication via your Facebook page? Are there multiple internal constituents that will want to sign off on posts?   You should also plan for the inevitable real time need to respond to help requests or issues with your product or service.  Lastly, check to see if your company has a social media policy.  It will likely need to be modified to reflect the real time nature of Facebook and your publishing strategy.
• What is your brand personality and messaging tone?  Consider adapting that for a social media environment where character limitations will challenge the traditional messaging architecture.
• What other social media tools should you use; and how will those differ in message, tone and purpose from your Facebook page?  i.e. Twitter, LinkedIn, company blog)
• How will you handle spam and response management to make your Facebook page a safe destination? As spam has increased, what words or terms do you want to track and moderate? Facebook provides the basic ability to delete unwanted comments and report or block users who violate Facebook’s Statements of Rights and Responsibilities.  Page administrators tend to use these functions while going through whichever moderation process they use, which brings us to the three moderation methods:  manual, automatic and one that combines the previous two.

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Step 2 – Create an Engaging, Ongoing Experience

• Speak in your brand or business voice, but respect the Facebook platform for length of post.  Also, look to how your fans comment to adjust for tone and approachability.  Vary first and third person to relfect the conversational approach that is appropriate for a particular piece of content.
• Plan to vary your posts to include multimedia posts: Vary and keep posts engaging and eye-catching.  Consider polls or quizzes to engage your fans in a two-way conversation.
• Utilize the power of the news feed:  Vitrue has found the news feed to be 110 times greater reach, and for instance, including a URL on a wall post allows “shares” by your fans which is just one way to drive more engagement through the news feed.
• Optimize and customize Tab content that can be used periodically in conjunction with your news feed.  With the news feed moving so rapidly you should include compelling, informative and engaging content or promotions via a coupon that harnesses the ongoing constant presence of a Tab.
• Target your posts:  Segment your fans through geo-location and language for relevancy using Open Graph objects.
• Use custom URL to shorten links:  Give your links authenticity and protect your analytics from competitors by using a custom or branded shortening tool for long URLs.

Step 3 – Develop a Conversational Calendar:

• Start with a 14 or 30-day advanced planning to layout events, topics and content that might be meaningful to your brand advocates.  Planning in advance will maximize the time you have to create meaningful and appropriate content
• Evaluate the number of posts for optimal reception by your fans.  We currently recommend staggering messaging for most businesses to 2-3 times a day.  This should vary if you are a media outlet publishing real time news content versus a B2B product or service.
• Time of day/day of week matters.  Consider the context of your business and when it makes sense to communicate.  For example, if you are a restaurant, before lunch and early evening prior to dinner might be optimal times for posting.
• Remember and capitalize on special events, holidays, news or milestones that are specific to your business that might be of interest to your followers, i.e. Labor Day is prime time for sales of consumer home goods
• Lastly, but not least:  measure to manage.  Track responses to your post by type, day, time as well as plays and shares.  This will help you iterate your calendar, post type and posting schedule.

This post is intended to be a high-level summary to get you started and moving in the right direction. Clearly social media is vast and requires ongoing refinement and thinking.  Please leave your thoughts or comments below on what has worked well for you in using Facebook as a Strategic Marketing Channel.

Erika Jolly Brookes is Vice President, Marketing at Vitrue. Follow her on twitter @ebrookes or email her at erika@vitrue.com.

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We all know the old philosophy question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it did it still make a sound?”  Regardless of where you come out on the question, if you’re a technology marketer about to bring a new product out the answer is a resounding “NO.”  Back in the day a launch was pretty straightforward, varying only by scale: put out a press release, get your media prepped, coordinate your advertising, mailings and coordinate customer updates, tradeshows, collateral.  There were natural gathering points for announcements and people waited eagerly to see what was new and exciting.

That was then.

Now, a marketer has to cut through the fog of information, find the audience hiding inside, and figure out how to get the attention of the attention-challenged long enough for it to register in their consciousness.  In a few hundred words I can’t guide you through the intricacies of building out a multi-channel launch plan but I can share what I’ve learned to help you off in the right direction:  First, know your target and why they will care.

Second, know your space.  That is, don’t make people work at understanding where your product fits.  This is not the time to create a market—that comes later with the analysts, press, broader marketing activities.  Find the world the product lives in and place it at the top of the heap.  Tout its value and advantages over others in the space.

Third, find out “where they live.”  That still means knowing what your targets read, where they go for information, what events they attend, but it also now means what blogs they read, who they follow on Twitter, who they know and what groups they participate in on LinkedIn among others.

Fourth, message frequently—but more briefly– adjust your message to your different audiences, and invite dialog.  Product launches today are not the one way flow of the past; it can’t be a fire hose of information because people won’t stay still long enough to get soaked.  Use social media liberally, but don’t use it rashly.  There’s a fine but definite line between social media spam and real announcements.  There have been enough books and seminars built on the topic that I won’t even attempt to educate on that topic, but I will urge you to either hire an expert, learn from an expert, or leave it to an expert.

Fifth, work out early looks by journalists, bloggers, even analysts.  Most can be trusted to keep your confidentiality if there’s a time sensitivity to the launch.  Otherwise, letting them leak out a first look can start generating buzz for you ahead of your own efforts.  And, if they don’t like what they see that informs you how you need to proceed BEFORE you launch and someone seagulls on you.

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Sixth, email isn’t a dirty word.  Used well it’s still a key vehicle for reaching large numbers of targeted potential customers, and new product introductions rank high on the list of things interested parties will open an email to learn about.  And stick with it.  With spam rules in mind, work your lists and database thoughtfully.  And as an aside, don’t be shy about cleaning your list up.  It’s false comfort to have a 20k database of names, 15k of whom have never opened a thing you’ve sent them or about which you know very little if anything.  Better to have a clean, targeted database of 5k interested parties to which you can add more.  Don’t worry about opt-outs either: they’re telling you they’re not interested in what you’re telling them, so save yourself the trouble.

Seventh, wherever possible, use whatever customer information you can.  Whether it’s an anonymized case study or a full-fledged testimonial, or  even a single quote from a beta customer, that adds dramatic credibility to your efforts.  If they’ll talk to the press or analysts, all the better.  If they’ll appear on your behalf at an event, better still.  Regardless of how much or how little, find someone other than your own people who will say something about what you’ve brought out to market.

Finally, keep it fresh by tying the launch into the larger business or technology issues the product serves.  Share information with your targets, involve them, even passively, in your community building.  Familiarity breeds interest (another old saw notwithstanding), and the more you wrap around the product through its launch period and beyond, the more noise that tree will make when it falls.

Alan E. Gold is the  Chief Marketing Officer at TradeStone Software, Inc. Follow him on twitter @alanegold or email him at agold@tradestonesoftware.com or reach him on skype by his handle: alan.gold

We’ve all seen it. That brochure. That Web site. That annual report. The one that incorporates powerful design, compelling images, a fantastic layout… and a slew of nonsensical marketing copy that doesn’t bother to explain what the company is all about.

One of the most important steps any organization must take is to clearly define its identity. Who are we? What products and services do we offer? How are we different from our competitors? The answers to these questions are often straightforward. Yet, the predominant corporate culture calls for dressing up these answers with slick, flashy language – i.e. marketing-speak – to the point that they become virtually unrecognizable.

The ability to clearly explain to customers who you are, what you do and why they should want to be involved with you is essential to business success. In our increasingly global world, we all are relying more and more on our marketing materials – particularly our online content – to clearly convey our identity and messages to key audiences.

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One of the easiest ways to prevent your messages from getting lost in translation is to banish marketing-speak. This week, as we make our resolutions for 2010, here are a few tips and tactics to make marketing-speak “so last year.”

Know Thy Enemy: Identify Marketing-Speak

The Twitter account @FakeAPStylebook recently spoofed marketing-speak with this tweet:

“Only use the word ‘proactive’ if it will dynamically impact your synergistic throughput paradigm.”

Of course, this is exaggerated – but not by much. Think about the number of times you have seen a description like this on a company Web site:

“Our high-performance, integrated, cross-functional professional solutions help clients align business goals with dynamic strategies to achieve desired outcomes.”

This generic, buzzword-heavy description doesn’t do anything to advance a potential customer’s knowledge of the company’s culture, offerings or qualifications. By identifying and eliminating these forgettable phrases, a company can increase its chances of holding a customer’s interest and differentiating itself from the pack.

Think Elevator – Not Elevated.

In marketing, particularly in the business-to-business world, the elevator speech is among the most powerful tools we have. This brief, face-to-face interaction helps people understand who we are and what our companies are about in 20 seconds or less, which can be less time than it takes to read through the “About Us” section on a Web site. Elevator speeches are brief, straightforward and won’t leave your audience groping for their dictionary when you’re finished.

What would happen if we began testing all of our marketing materials with this goal in mind? For starters, that “About Us” description on the Web site – the one that includes four or more words you would never use in conversation at a networking event or a dinner party – would be in for an overhaul. Customers aren’t going to be impressed by your high-minded prose or the breadth of your vocabulary, they’re going to be impressed by your ability to connect with them and communicate effectively.

“Speak, not so that you may be understood, but so that you cannot be misunderstood.”

The sound communications advice above comes from my grandmother, a grammar maven and lover of language. Her quote hangs on the wall in my office as a reminder of the responsibility we have as professional communicators to be creative, clear conduits between our companies and our customers.

We all take pride in our ability to move people, to urge them to action and to inspire them to purchase our products through the strength of our messaging. Nuance, inflection and word choice are important parts of these messages; however, when it comes to explaining to your customers who you are and why they want to purchase your goods or services, clarity is king.

Veronica Brown is a vice president at TheWadeGroup, a public affairs firm headquartered in Washington, DC. Contact her at veronica.brown@yahoo.com or follow her on Twitter @veebrown.

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Angela Brown, Business Development Specialist at
Venable LLP is today’s guest blogger:

No matter where you are in your career or what industry you’re in, chances are you’re constantly being bombarded with the next big thing when it comes to marketing your brand.

The way that we work and communicate has changed so much that our attention spans are increasingly short and our brains are increasingly fried. We’re always on – tethered to BlackBerries and iPhones, checking emails from soccer games and taking conference calls from airport terminals.

Twenty-four-hour news cycles have given way to up-to-the-minute blog posts, and every time you think you’ve mastered the latest and greatest social networking tool, another one comes along and it’s time to play catch up.

Trying to establish or sustain a career in a challenging economy while staying on top of industry trends and living your life is a recipe for burnout. So you start to slip, and common courtesies and best practices go out the window. We’ve become so consumed with what’s next, we have forgotten the basics.

I’ve seen it everywhere lately. I see it when a disgruntled blogger posts about a pitch they received from an individual or company that clearly has no idea what they write about or who their audience is. I see it when I receive pitches for services I don’t need or don’t have the authority to buy. And I see it when people flock to social media sites, post once and never return.

The people and companies that make these mistakes have one thing in common – they are members of the “throw spaghetti at wall” school of thought, choosing to take action without direction in hopes that their efforts will stick. But stickiness is not a marketing strategy.

If you treat your marketing and branding efforts like spaghetti, you won’t get very far.

A sticky marketing approach will get you two things:

1. You will risk alienating your audience.
2. You and/or your brand will lose credibility.

To the first point, the worst thing about sticky marketing is that it’s self-serving. Sticky marketers are so consumed with their product, their service and what they believe to be newsworthy, that they give little consideration to the needs, wants or interests of the people on the other side. They’re looking inward and working backward.

Under ideal circumstances, the point of sale shouldn’t be your first encounter with a blogger, prospective client or consumer. From performing extensive market research to gain insight into consumer wants, needs and complaints, to monitoring blogs and commenting on posts prior to engaging the authors (and engaging them with relevance), what the marketing strategists behind the most successful businesses have in common is that they look outward with their efforts.

Savvy marketing strategists recognize the importance of understanding the needs of your audience first. Never assume that a prospect wants or needs what you have to offer because their name appeared in a search or on a list. Do your research, listen, establish and cultivate the relationship, and go from there. Every move you make should be client or prospect focused, and you must continue to nurture that relationship for the long term. They’ll thank you for it and tell their friends.

Going about it any other way sends the message that you can’t be bothered to tailor your approach to what your audience truly wants or needs, and there is no faster way to get them to write you off.

Loss of credibility is a natural byproduct of alienating your audience with a sticky marketing strategy. Credibility is based on trust, which is extremely difficult to gain if you don’t take the time that an outside-in marketing approach requires. And in the same way that a business can reap the benefits of word of mouth when it comes to a job well done, word gets around when you compromise credibility with the wrong person.

The proliferation of new media has given a new voice to consumers and influencers, and increased the speed with which they can sing your praises or verbally rake you over the coals. Choosing sticky marketing over a thoughtful, consumer-centric approach can make the difference between building a stable of loyal brand evangelists and having your brand skewered on a blog (or in the mainstream media). And when it comes to earning trust and building the lasting relationships that will carry your business forward, sticky marketing just doesn’t work.

There will always be new ways for us improve and change the way that we work, but we can’t forget the fundamentals. Save the spaghetti for supper.

Green Buzz Agency wants to thank Angela Brown for her great guest blog post!

To Contact Angela Email: angelabrown810@gmail.com

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We’ve all seen the new Pepsi logo, and been struck by it’s resemblance to the Obama campaign logo, but what would you reasonably imagine it took Peter Arnell, the designer, to create it?

A recently released PDF (yes, a boring old PDF) revealed the possible background for the Pepsi logo. In 27 pages, a multitude of justifications are put forth. To some, this is the sophisticated cutting edge of design, to others it’s a load of mumbo jumbo designed to get people talking about Pepsi (like us!).
Here is the full release which is worth a read, but let’s take a look at some of the contents right here.

First is a diagram showing the golden ratio as it applies to the Pepsi logo. It seems to make some sense, but let’s move on.

How about the “Pepsi Energy Field”?:

Or how the new Pepsi logo is impacted by magnetic fields, sun radiation, and wind motion between 2008 and 2010:
And did you know that every can of Pepsi now has it’s own gravity field as well.?
The Pepsi Universe? You bet.

So, you’ve seen the document, or parts of it, but how do you think it was received in the blogosphere and in the design world? Check out a few opinions we found:

1. It’s a hoax and an effective way to create buzz

• Erik Hinton, The Pitt News: “Fake or not, “Breathtaking” is the Sokal Hoax of our times. If the document is vetted as legitimate, a punishing blow is struck to advertising and aesthetics as a rampant waste of money on puffed-up nonsense.”
• Lee of “A Hundred Avatars”: “I still wonder if that design brief was a viral leak…”
• Jessica Hartstein of Culture-Buzz.com: “Is it part of a viral campaign? It looks like we’ll have to wait for the real answer. In the meantime, Pepsi can enjoy its ride on the buzz wave.”

2. Arnell is insane/fleecing Pepsi

• Mediabistro’s AgencySpy: “Pepsi paid more than $10 mil. for the logo design.”
• Peter Arnell himself?: “It’s all bulls––t,” he said. “A logo on a can of soda? Please. My life is bulls––t.”

3. The Design World is corrupt and this is proof

• Reddit commenters: “It really hammers in the stereotype of Advertising in general, and the complete idiocy that goes in to marketing.”
• Stephanie Smirnov on PR MAMA: “It’s fine to be smart and provocative (and yes, sometimes strategic explication requires sophisticated diagramming and fancy-pants words), but a person can go too far.”

What do YOU think? Comment below!

Thanks to Dan Dawley for his expert help with this post!