By George Whitely, Stephan & Brady, www.stephanbrady.com

While the grumbling over Facebook’s fickle attitude toward privacy settings has escalated into a roar within the social media community, its ever-changing platform indicates good things for B2B companies using the site for marketing purposes.

Facebook programmers are working to make the site more connected to the internet as a whole. The introduction of Open Graph earlier this year allows information to be shared on Facebook from thousands of websites.

The Open Graph protocol enables you to integrate your Web pages into the social graph. Once your pages become objects in the graph, users can establish connections to your pages as they do with Facebook Pages. Based on the structured data you provide via the Open Graph protocol, your pages show up richly across Facebook: in user profiles, within search results and in News Feed. – Facebook

The new Open Graph plug-ins allows you to add social tools to your website including a “Like” button, an activity feed, recommendations, a login button, comments and a live stream.

Adding these plug-ins makes the pages on your site a partial extension of Facebook itself. The “Like” button, for example, turns any of your pages into a Facebook Fan page, with users then sharing the link with their network on Facebook.

With the switch from declaring yourself a “fan” of a page to “liking” a page, the little thumbs-up sign has suddenly gained more power as a marketing tool. By declaring they “like” something, Facebook users share your information with all of their connections and allow them to leave comments. With the Open Graph model, a website can push information (such as special terms or other purchase incentive offers) directly into the newsfeed of everyone who has indicated that they “like” the brand, even without the user having to log into Facebook.

For the most part, these changes all provide a very valuable resource to marketer’s user data:

For every user id, Facebook keeps a log of the IP address that accessed the account, the date and time, and what exactly the user did -- clicking on an advertisement, looking at someone else's profile, posting a photo or sending a message to a friend, etc. – The Washington Post

And there are a lot of users providing data. According to a July 23 article in The Washington Post, Facebook now boasts 500 million users. “This means that more people are on Facebook, which got its start a mere six years ago, than live in the United States, Canada and Mexico combined.”

According to Andrew Nusca, a writer for tech and business site ZDNet.com, networks like Facebook will become even more important for the huge amount of data they index. “This is a data game, this is a war over data,” Nusca said. “That Facebook knows what you like or don’t like… That’s why they changed those pages, because they can look it up. They’re tags.”

As Facebook continues to make changes to its platform (let’s face it, we know they will), it will be important to stay on top of what these changes mean for B2B marketers.

By Curtis Gorrell, Bader Rutter & Associates, www.converge.baderutter.com

Marketing to people through their mobile devices is still in its infancy, but it’s gaining interest among marketers. Entrepreneur magazine chose mobile marketing as one of the top 10 Web marketing trends for 2010, and research conducted by the Mobile Marketing Association indicates that mobile marketing spending is set to rise 124 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Mobile marketing can be an effective way to reach your target audience, particularly when integrated with other tactics, such as social media. For marketers who are interested in incorporating mobile marketing into their communications plans, a proven strategy is to approach mobile as an actionable item. The acronym ACT provides an easy way to get started.

A is for Audience

Like other aspects of an effective marketing strategy, it’s important to know your target audience. Start by gathering answers to the following questions:

• To what extent are they using mobile devices?
• Which mobile devices are they using?
• How are these devices being used?
• How can you improve your audience’s mobile experience as it relates to communicating with your business?

Many mobile devices have built-in features that you should think about leveraging to the benefit of your audience. For example, consider location-based services that take advantage of mobile GPS capabilities. Since most people carry their mobile devices with them at all times, start examining ways in which location could be used to benefit and communicate with your audience.

C is for Competition

Competition is often an overlooked step in evaluating a mobile marketing strategy. See what your competitors are doing. Each of the different mobile operating systems has its own respective marketplace where users can find and download third-party applications. That’s a great place to start research.

By entering a keyword search, such as in the iTunes store or the Blackberry and Android marketplaces, you can find out in about an hour how your competition is reaching its customers via mobile marketing. As you learn more, you can dig deeper and enhance your company’s ability to stay a step ahead of this new trend.

T is for Total Commitment

The mobile marketplace is not unlike what we experienced in the mid-1990s, when websites eclipsed Prodigy and other Internet-based services in popularity. In the ‘90s, creating websites was mostly a function of the IT department until companies understood the importance of integrating that function across the company. In the same way, mobile marketing needs to be a part of a company’s strategic planning and part of the overall process.

There are a lot of companies uncertain about how mobile marketing will take off and whether it makes sense for their businesses. If this is something your company is considering, know that it shouldn’t be a one-off project, but an integral part of an effective marketing strategy.

By Jeff McClellan, MMT, www.mmtadv.com

The economy has companies spooked. They’ve been like cattle on a stampede, running wildly through the streets of Dodge City, and customers are running for cover. As they careen headlong into the hottest digital tactic or the social media du jour, they trample over brand equity that has taken years to build.

To badly paraphrase Dickens, this is the best of times to be marketing a brand. And it’s the worst of times.  We have lots of tactics to use, and too many tactics to use.

Based on my highly scientific, anecdotal evidence, I think companies that are struggling haven’t found their focus. They can’t tell you what the one thing is that differentiates them from the herd. (Warning: rant ahead)  They say “yes” to every tactic that comes down the pike.  They can’t resist the urge to chase down every lead, or participate in every new business pitch. And they claim to be experts in social media just because they can create Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.

A lot of companies are embracing all things digital, just because, it’s there. They haven’t stopped to consider what problem they’re trying to solve. And are they really hoping the 55- 70 demo will friend them on Facebook?

A bad economy can be a friend to marketers. If you keep your head, it will force you to focus on what you do best. Often this means doing less, better. So just say no. 

This may be a perfect time to look at how your brand is articulated. When times were good, companies, particularly in the business-to-business world, could get away with pushing features before benefits. Creating any kind of emotional connection with customers be damned.

What is that you really want to stand for? Can you look at your website, your collateral, your ads, your channel marketing, your email blasts and yes, your Facebook page, as an accurate representation of what your brand stands for? 

Now’s the time to work on developing a digital footprint in ways that makes sense for your target audiences. Sure this is Marketing 101, but we all get caught up in dealing with day-to-day business stuff, and put off until another day more user friendly communications that are integrated with your messaging.

If you’re still climbing out of the economic rut we’ve been in, you may have better luck by scaling back, not so much on budget, but on the number of things your doing. We have a client in the custom corrugated packaging industry. They’ve focused on working fewer business leads and positioning themselves as a key vendor for their customer.

Another local manufacturer of metal products has found that they’ve been getting better service by reducing the number of their vendors.

In advertising, the natural inclination is to pull back on everything when budgets are tight. The answer could be to pick a tactic and go all in on it, and then look for ways to leverage tactics cost-effectively. Couple an event with public relations. Develop a highly targeted email blast or direct mail effort that drives people to a microsite. Use social media in a way that generates feedback. We’re working in a one-to-one marketing environment. Make the best of it.

Above all, make sure that whatever tactic you decide to pursue, keep a tight rein on your brand message so that it’s consistent, differentiating and on target.

By Brian Molstad, 7Summits, 7Summitsagency.com

Time is, of course, money.  If you really want to see an ROI from web analytics, you need to reduce the time to insight.  This will require taking a fresh look at what you’re tracking and why.  In this series, I outline ways to abandon bureaucracy and obligatory reports, and take action faster.

First Things First

As with any other initiative, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you arrived.  Save massive amounts of time and cost by ensuring your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are clearly defined and accepted throughout the organization.  For most websites these can include:

Elevate your KPIs in your reports and focus on outcomes.  In most cases, your web analytics tool (once configured correctly) will automate the tracking of these metrics (also providing your data gaps are closed – see below).  If this is challenging due to the use of numerous third-party systems, you may want to manually log performance over time in a spreadsheet or work toward automating KPI data collection via APIs.  These are also good candidates to be featured in custom-designed reports for the top brass in your organization.

Close Those Data Gaps!

Now that you’re in agreement as to why your site exists in the first place, it’s time to make sure you can actually verify if it’s achieving set objectives.  In some cases, your site may not be configured in a way that allows for the right data to be collected at all.  Minor site updates can have major impact.  Examples include:

In an upcoming issue, we’ll continue our exploration of an agile web analytics philosophy and cover topics such as creating a “To Review” list and why data automation is not the end-all-be-all.