Image: Nerd Reactor

As the Facebook IPO Roadshow shifts into high gear, it seems relevant to consider exactly what value Facebook can offer your brand and business. While the addition of Instagram and Glancee has done much to sure up their mobile capacities (as yet only in perception), the core business opportunities cannot be underestimated.

The roster of sales and marketing services can be broken out into the following categories:

- F-Stores (E-commerce stores where customers buy real goods with real currency inside Facebook)

- Facebook Credits (Currency for games and in-app virtual goods)

- Facebook Social Plug Ins (‘Like,’ ‘Share,’ ‘Recommend’ services/products)

- Facebook Places & Location Tab (integrating online and in-store experience through rewards)

- Facebook Open Graph (shopping ‘verbs’ and ‘nouns’ being shared through Timeline, Ticker, and News Feeds)

- Facebook Mobile Platform (Social shopping through Notifications, Requests, Timeline and News Feed on app)

- Facebook Ads & Sponsored/Featured Stories (Drive awareness, engagement and purchases)

Seen together, it’s clear that Facebook is creating a self-contained F, E, and M-commerce ecosystem that will become increasingly important to brands because that’s where their customers are. More than that, the social network is demonstrating a wide return on investments specific to very different business goals. Here are some examples:

- Facebook is already a viable retail platform: The top 3 brands on Facebook (by fans) all sell directly on Facebook - Coca-Cola (41m), Starbucks (29m) and Disney (35m).

- Facebook customers spend money: 1.5x: Facebook users spend 1.5x more online that other Internet users.

- Facebook drives e-commerce: 6.5%: click-through rates on Facebook walls are 6.5%.

-Facebook is where you customers are: Nine in Ten: Proportion of US social network users who use Facebook.

- Facebook drives word of mouth sales: Media value generated by the average Facebook fan is $3.60/year.

- Facebook drives loyalty: 117%: the additional amount a fan will spend on a brand compared to a non-fan.

- F Commerce is accelerating: 76% of retailers plan to use Facebook for ‘social commerce’ initiatives.

- F-comerce is future-proof: 200+ million: Facebook users accessing the utility through their mobile devices.

The net result is that the platform commands an enviable leadership position over social commerce (and for even more ROI case studies, click here). So much so, that Mike Fauscette, an analyst at IDC Consulting stated, ‘In three to five years, 10 percent to 15 percent of total consumer spending in developed countries may go through sites such as Facebook”, while  Sumeet Jain, Principal at CMEA Capital states, “It’s a matter of time—within the next five or so years—before more business will be done on Facebook than Amazon.”

So whether or not Facebook cracks the $100 billion valuation on May 18^th, its value to your customers, brand, and business success is undeniable.

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed on Behind the Brand with Bryan Elliott. The show is designed to help brands and entrepreneurs build their businesses. Here we discuss the future of social branding, and below are two great interviews with prolific author and marketer, Seth Godin, and Jeff Hayzlett, former Kodak CMO and co-author of, ‘Running the Gauntlet.’ Hope you enjoy them and click here to see all the ‘Behind the Brand’ episodes. (Next time I promise to wear a tie!)

To read Seth’s blog, click here.

To follow Jeff Hayzlett on Twitter, click here. To follow Bryan Elliott, click here.

Gagen MacDonald/APCO Research/Infographic by Intersection Consulting

There’s a powerful transition underway in which companies are now seeking to leverage the same dynamics they’re using to reach customers to engage their employees. Gagen MacDonald and APCO Worldwide have done some great new research in this area and the info graphic above explains how to create an internal social media strategy that will connect and inspire your employees.

The key factor I would add to this great illustration is the ever-present need to ensure the emotional connection that will drive employee social media engagement is in place. No amount of technology, structure or systems will serve a company and its employees if they’re not emotionally motivated to do so. And, more than ever, that emotional connection stems from the companies purpose.

Often the mission statement of a company is an idle relic of corporate reporting that has no significance in the life of its leadership or employees. But those companies that generate true passion and loyalty among employees and customers, all know why they are working there or what the company stands for.

Brands such as Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola and Patagonia have consistently demonstrated this ability and anyone who has had the good fortune to walk their office corridors can feel the company purpose in the air, the furniture and the very “being” of the organization. It’s that qualitative difference that make the quantitative success possible.

So as we benefit from the tools, tactics and structures outlined above, let’s always factor in the human or emotional component that drives the connective tissue of social media between employees and with customers. It’s this sense of purpose that not only distinguishes a brand from its competitors, but also makes that company more meaningful to their employees and customers lives inspiring them to talk about the brand using their own social media channels.

Do you think the purpose of a company is important to its employees? Do you believe it’s equally important to how they use social media internally?

For more research and a downloadable pdf of the Gagen MacDonald/APCO findings, click here.

Source: V3

Last week I wrote about how important timing is to the success of your brand from a macro and micro point of view. Well, this is thrown into even starker relief when you consider what happens on the web in 60 seconds. Here are a few staggering facts:

- 30 hours of video uploaded and 1.3 million video clips watched on YouTube

- 639,800 GB of global IP data transferred

- 204 million emails sent

- Amazon rings up 83,000 in sales (yes, in one minute)

- 320 new Twitter accounts are created and 100,000 new tweets are generated

- 3,000 photos are uploaded and there are some 20 million photo views

- 100+ new LinkedIn accounts are created

- 1,300 new mobile device users

- 277,000 Facebook logins and 6 million Facebook

- 2 million search queries

Taken together this post and the last paint a telling portrait of how much information overlaid your customer faces. From a branding perspective this making the requirement to be singular and consistent even more pressing, while from a user interface perspective it requires us to make the customer experience effortless and simple. Not small feats, but necessary when you consider everything else that is going on competing for their attention.

What fact shocks you most? How do you think brands should change to serve customers better in this environment?

I recently took a tour of Dell’s state-of-the-art Social Listening Center. You’ll see the various tools, filters and tracking that Dell does to stay on top of discussions about their brand and provide superior customer service. They have been leading this field on the corporate side for several years and it’s impressive how comprehensive and granular their social listening is.

Equally exciting is the American Red Cross Operations Center that the Dell system above inspired. Dell and the American Red Corss have hhas a long term relationship and he we see a powerful example of partnership and role modeling that has created this state of the art tool in Disaster response; the Digital Operations Center (nickname: Digi-DOC).

Powered by technology and a generous donation from Dell Computers, the center can track social media traffic by providing a “snapshot of cyberspace”. This allows Red Cross to see not only trending or emerging issues, but also use this information to better inform its response to disasters. The Red Cross is also using the center to engage citizens as Digital Volunteers, and distribute Red Cross information during times of need.

So together Dell and the Red Cross are using social listening to serve customers better and save lives. This demonstrates not only the importance of social listening to both for profit and non profit companies but also its capacity to change lives.

I was so thrilled when Robert Tercek kindly agreed to speak at the We First seminar.

His talk was inspiring, confronting, educational, and rousing in equal measure. Everyone loved it and got so much out of it. For those that missed the We First Social Branding Seminar, Robert has kindly let us share it here. Enjoy.

You can follow Robert on twitter @Superplex, read his blog here, and watch his great show ‘This Week in Social Media’ here. Obviously he’s also an amazing speaker and you’ll find his contact details on his blog.

If you’re interested in the next We First Social Branding seminar and want to receive the information first, click here.

The first is a chart for Linked In Analytics that breaks out the growing and shrinking industries as defined by the volume of jobs added or lost. Of particular interest is the relative position of each industry. I would encourage you to examine the list and consider what place your brand occupies as defined by the specific mix of skills, services and technologies you offer.

Clearly it’s far better to find yourself in the upper right hand corner with a sizable circle indicating growth industries. If you find yourself in the lower right, it is worthwhile considering the prospects on your company in terms of larger macro-economic forces at work and the way technology is changing business. As any entrepreneur (billionaire or otherwise) will tell you, timing is everything in terms of what companies and industries explode and charts such as these give us a window into shifts that shape our success and futures.

The second chart from U.S. Net habits data illustrates in simple terms how the seconds that a web page takes to load impacts customer abandonment. A few facts jump out:

- 1 in 4 Americans abandon a page takes longer than 4 seconds to load.

- 4 in 10 Americans abandon a mobile shopping site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

- 5 in 10 mobile users abandon a web page if it doesn’t load in under 10 seconds.

As Fast Company notes, this means just one extra second in page load time could cost Amazon $1.6 billion in sales a year. Or for Google, by slowing search results by just 1/4 of a second they could lose the ad revenue on 8 million searches a day.

So no matter what your industry is, what your brand stands for, or how smart your marketing is, never lose site of the fact that capturing your customer’s attention is hard, but losing it can be even more costly.

Infographic by OnlineGraduatePrograms.com

This is an important film and I hope you share it. It is unconscionable as a father and a man that children are subjected to such unspeakable treatment. It’s also a chance for us to help just by sharing this film. By making Joseph Kony famous for his actions. By using the tools we enjoy every day to talk about our holidays, what we bought and what is new, to raise awareness of these crimes against children. This is a chance to show (extra)ordinary people using technology to work together to change their lives and our world.

Here is their webiste with an action kit and here is the film on YouTube also. Finally, follow Invisible Children on twitter here.

With this challenge in mind, I wanted to share three examples of emerging technologies that will change our world. Part fact, part fiction, each turns on technology that is already in the making and shall be shortly coming to market. So here goes.

With the imminent launch of the iPad 3, I wanted to share this vision of what it may look like and do. The point is not to guess whether this is accurate or not but to consider what such possibilities could unlock for your business.

The second video is a vision of the future of smart glass by Corning. The glass projects a future of collaboration, creativity and connection that seems impossible today but that is almost here.

Finally, we have the much hyped Google Googles or glasses that hold the promise of an augmented reality experience or streaming data right before your eyes.

After watching these two videos, ask yourself:

• How could I use such technology in my business?
• How could it scale my brand awareness?
• How can I use each of these technologies to rbetter serve my customers?
• How could I use it to increase the positive social impact of my brand?
• How can they be used to shape our world?

Simon Mainwaring: On Engagement in the Social Marketplace from Let Go & Lead on Vimeo.

I recently had the privilege of being included in Gagen MacDonald’s fantastic ‘Let Go & Lead’ project and the interview just came out so I wanted to share it with you.

‘Let Go & Lead’ is a project to explore the ideas of leadership and transformation in the 21st Century. How can an idea take root in an organization and flourish so that all are focused on the same outcome? How can we inspire those around us to take up an idea and deliver it, bringing the full weight of their gifts to bear on the challenge?

Maril MacDonald engaged thought leaders from different walks of life—in fields as diverse as literature to education, engineering to social psychology— for conversations on what it means to “let go” and lead people to create meaningful, sustainable change.

In all there are twelve leaders who were interviewed including Howard Schultz and Dan Pink, among others. Here are all the interviews and I hope that together they help you steer you organization to greater success and positive impact through inspiring leadership.