You may have noticed some numbers appearing under each of your Facebook Page’s posts. Facebook now shares post metrics at the bottom of each status update, and for many brands, those numbers are low.

Coincidentally, (read: likely not coincidentally) Facebook recently announced the launch of Promoted Posts. Brand Pages can now pay to have posts seen by more fans.

To create a Promoted Post, write a status update. Then, select the Promote button at the bottom of the post to get a list of prices. Each price point has an associated estimated reach – the percentage of fans who will see your post.

Facebook's Promoted Posts

After you make your price selection and post your status update, Facebook also recommends you Pin the post to the top of your page to make it more visible and accessible.

Per Facebook, promoted posts will show in the news feeds of the people who like your Page. If the people who like your Page interact with the post, it can show in the news feeds of their friends. These posts will be labeled as “Sponsored” in the news feed. Unlike ads and sponsored stories, Promoted Posts will not be shown in the right-hand column of Facebook.

We have been told Facebook fans are more likely to purchase, consider and recommend brands to friends. But since Facebook has admitted using an algorithm to rank content based on the likely interest to a user to deliver the most relevant content – a non-paid status update may not reach a large number of your fans.

The new Promoted Posts – and the growing inability to organically interact with fans to grow your Brand Page – shouldn’t be a surprise. Once Facebook went public, it had to keep investors satisfied through significant and continued revenue growth, which means Facebook needs to focus on advertising dollars.  The article 5 Ways Facebook’s IPO Affects Brands from Mashable points out,

…with a greater focus on ads, it will become increasingly more challenging for brand managers to fuel organic growth. Valuable, engaging content will always be vital, but without content working hand-in-hand with Facebook advertising, your brand will be unable to keep up in the social space. The days of brands getting significant traction on Facebook organically are over.

What does this mean for you and your brand’s Facebook page? Pay attention to Facebook’s ad offerings. Read case studies about what’s working for companies on Facebook and what’s not, and keep up-to-date on the latest Facebook changes by regularly reading NST’s blog. Create engaging content and try some of the different ad platforms including Promoted Posts, but watch the analytics carefully to see what is increasing engagement. What works for one brand may not work for another.

Will you try Promoted Posts? What do you think about the future of Facebook advertising and what it means for brands?

In a previous blog post we told you about Twitter’s promoted tweets and how participant companies would need to truly engage their followers in order to get a positive ROI.  For some companies, the promoted tweets have been hugely successful.  Coca-Cola reported a 6 percent engagement rate and companies are now spending upwards of $100,000 to advertise via Promoted Tweets.

Twitter's Promoted Accounts

Now Twitter has launched its latest advertising product: Promoted Accounts.  Per Twitter, Promoted Accounts will be suggested to Twitter users based on the list of people and organizations they currently follow.  When an advertiser promotes an account, Twitter’s algorithm will look at that account’s followers and who they follow.  Twitter will then target Twitter users who follow similar accounts but who do not yet follow that advertiser’s Twitter account. Twitter explains, “… for example, a lot of people who follow several gaming-related accounts also follow @xbox.  If someone follows gaming-related accounts, but not @xbox, Twitter may recommend @xbox to that person.”

So will advertisers be excited about Promoted Accounts?  Most likely yes.  As of right now, Twitter is working with more than 40 advertisers and 80 percent of them have become repeat buyers. However, considering the cost of Promoted Tweets, using Promoted ad products might not be feasible for smaller businesses, especially since Twitter does not currently offer geographically focused ads.  Mashable.com pointed out that in order for these ad platforms to be useful to small businesses, the advertising platforms need to be targeted based on location.

So how could a company use Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts?  These Promoted advertising products would be perfect to use during a contest or sweepstakes to help encourage customer engagement and to get people excited about entering.  The ads could also be used around the announcement or debut of a new product or service – like Virgin Mobile did when they used Promoted Tweets to announce flights to a new city.  And finally, companies could use the Promoted products around large events – like Coca-Cola did with the World Cup, to get followers excited about and involved with the event.  While most companies might be wary of purchasing Promoted products, we should keep a close eye the success of these products as they allow not just for brand awareness, but for customer involvement and word-of-mouth buzz when Twitter users share the information with their followers.  And if that’s not exciting enough, The Wall Street Journal noted that “…on average 5% of Twitter users who saw a Promoted Tweet interacted with it, a rate that is ‘an order of magnitude greater’ than most online ad campaigns!”

In a recently released survey from the Worldcom Public Relations Group (NST is a long-time partner), public relations firms around the world predict a rise in social media and research, and a decline in media relations and advertising services over the next three years. More than 70 of Worldcom’s 104 partners from across the globe responded to the survey.

“The results of this survey clearly demonstrate that public relations has moved multichannel,” said Stefan Pollack, chair of the Worldcom Americas Region and president of The Pollack PR Marketing Group, a Los Angeles-based firm. “From a trend perspective, clients are looking for firms that can deliver immediate impact with sustainable value. These results provide insight to our partner firms about how to gear their client programming and to determine how best to continue to grow services and in what areas.”

According to the survey, the services respondents expect to see a decrease in include: media relations (19 percent), advertising (17 percent), and direct mail and marketing (11 percent). In general, the majority of firms are optimistic about business increasing in the next three to five years.

More than half of the respondents expected social media, interactive/web development and search engine optimization services to increase – 93 percent, 73 percent and 61 percent, respectively. Yet obstacles still remain for firms to determine how to increase revenue from these services; particularly search engine optimization – for example, no agency reported more than 10 percent of revenue from SEO.

In addition, one-third of the Worldcom Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and Asia Pacific region firms expect the percentage of work from their home countries to decrease. This represents an opportunity for global firms to acquire clients from beyond their home countries. Additional key findings include investor relations and influencer/stakeholder relations as being other significant areas of revenue, and 37 percent of firms in the Americas targeting specific cultural demographics. The most commonly cited was Latino/Hispanic, with 10 percent.

Methodology

The online survey was sent to 104 Worldcom firms regarding services provided by their firms. Seventy-four firms responded, a response rate of 71 percent. Padilla Speer Beardsley’s research practice facilitated the survey.

I recently attended the San Diego Ad Club’s annual Interactive Day, an all-day conference focusing on the latest trends, solutions and services in digital marketing and advertising. I kept seeing the same theme throughout the day: marketers need to make innovation a top priority and make a commitment to investing in understanding and using the new technology.

One of the sessions I attended was focused on search engine optimization with SEO expert Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOMoz.org, at the helm. The presentation was filled with many ways to not only increase your website’s search engine rankings (think keyword tracking and research), but also other innovative ways to get your message across online.

One item Fishkin highlighted was the use of widgets and badges. By creating a creative widget or badge for your website and asking other websites or blogs to post it, you will not only receive links back, but it is also a great way to get a specific message across. The example Fishkin used was for the website Picnik, a photo editing software company. The company created a badge and embedded the words “photo editing awesomeness.” Not only was Picnik extremely successful at getting a large number of blogs to post it, but when you search the words photo editing through Google or Bing, Picnik is the first result.

Another session I attended was focused on mobile marketing. While I knew this area is rapidly growing, I was surprised to learn at how many users this sector already has. According to Amielle Lake, CEO of Tagga, a mobile marketing software and solutions firm, every month more than 73 million mobile phone users view websites, more than 70 million phone users use apps and more than 14.5 million phone users access social media applications. Lake did point out that while social media (defined in terms of social networks) may not have scale, it does have reach.

The mobile marketing landscape includes:

• Advertising
• Marketing services (i.e. coupons, promotions, events and SMS text campaigns)
• Content, such as video, music, mobile websites and branded apps
• Commerce – being able to use your phone as your wallet

Lake stressed that companies and brands need to stop thinking about a mobile device as a stand-alone item. It should become an integrated part of any marketing campaign, just like social media is now.

While I only highlighted two sessions, there were many other insightful presentations given. To see a detailed list of the San Diego Ad Club’s Interactive Day presenters, along with their respective presentations, visit the San Diego Ad Club’s Facebook page.

Yours truly sans suit, The Donald and my client, John Sawyer

So, more than a year ago, we sat in the lobby of the W hotel in Manhattan, surrounded by lawyers and producers for the 2009 season of Celebrity Apprentice.  Less than 72 hours prior, they had recruited Chicken of the Sea to be on the show – for that matter, a two-hour episode directly leading up to the finale.

A number of ideas swirled about with regard to what the marketing challenge would be and how to tie the brand and its products in the show.  For the record, the lawyers and producers were some of the coolest folks.  They had their minds set on some ideas, but fortunately open and respectful that we (all two of us – yours truly and my client – out-numbered 3 to 1) were passionate about the brand and the story it had to tell.

For two years leading up to that fateful call from Celebrity Apprentice, Chicken of the Sea had been engaging consumers in conversations about health, nutrition and convenience through online and offline mediums.  We learned there is a powerful story to tell not just about the brand and its products, but also in how consumers view and use Chicken of the Sea – what it means to them.  We saw an opportunity to replicate that with the likes of Clint Black, Joan “Cluck Cluck Splash” Rivers et al on Celebrity Apprentice.

With agreement from the lawyers and producers, we laid out a challenge for the celebrities to tell the Chicken of the Sea story in the form of a jingle and a 30-second radio spot.  Moreover, it wasn’t as simple as that.  The celebs and their respective teams needed to invest the time in learning about Chicken of the Sea and its loyal consumers.  They weren’t going to be judged solely on how catchy their tunes would be, but more on telling the story about the consumers behind the brand.

What that led to, in addition to the drama and debate of creating a jingle and radio spot, is two hours worth of unscripted conversations about Chicken of the Sea – precisely what we were shooting for and attempting to replicate, and there was hardly any discussion about getting video footage of the products in the celebs’ hands or on a table near where they sat.  Sacrilege to some, but again it was about the conversations.

So when The New York Times published the iTVX data on the most effective product placement in television for 2009, most would think the initial reaction of Chicken of the Sea being at the top was met with excitement.  But it told us much more.  Real conversations are powerful, more powerful than arranging to have your product sit statically in front of a celebrity, and product integration must reflect the character of the brand.  Alongside that is being a champion for your client, its brand and what it represents.

I just wish I were smart enough to wear a better suit on the show, and, for what it’s worth, my mother hasn’t forgiven me for contributing to Clint’s firing.

“Increased government oversight” isn’t a phrase that many individuals are likely to be in support of these days, but the new proposed revisions to the Federal Trade Commission’s advertising guidelines may not be such a bad thing.

As consumers experience an erosion of trust in traditional information sources – including corporate America, media, government organizations, etc. – many are turning to their own personal networks (virtual or otherwise) to obtain the information they seek. We’ve seen this firsthand with the rise in popularity of sites like Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon, Twitter and other social platforms that allow consumers to share information with people they trust.

In the virtual world, knowing who you can trust is a difficult task, and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawyers have drafted up some new guidelines for the online world, including blogs, product reviews and discussion boards (as well as some offline marketing tactics such as street teams that have surfaced since the guidelines were created in 1980) that are intended to help protect consumers from being misled by less-than-transparent sources.

The Federal Trade Commission, which among other tasks helps protect consumers from false claims in advertising, is set to vote on the revisions to the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (PDF) this fall to include regulations for these new types of media and marketing tactics.

In essence, the new guidelines would require posters to disclose any paid relationships “between the endorser and the advertiser” and could hold both the endorser and the advertiser legally responsible for any false claims. In addition to blogs, the recommended revisions also target discussion boards, such as product review sections.

A recent example of these misleading tactics was perpetrated by Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company in New York, which asked employees to pose as customers and write positive reviews about its procedures on various sites. The company also created a number of sites that appeared to be independent on which they posted additional fake reviews. After an investigation by the New York Attorney General, the company reached a settlement of $300,000.

Transparency is a practice reputable public relations practitioners have been preaching for decades, as we know that being honest and forthright with our actions helps us to build back that eroding trust among our key stakeholders.

While the FTC agrees the new guidelines will be difficult to police, some in the blogging community are screaming “Big Brother,” and are anxious to see how government oversight, and potential investigations, may impact the free flow of information on the blogosphere. The FTC has stated it doesn’t intend to troll the Internet searching for violators and admitted that investigation of this nature will “be most likely because its an outgrowth of some other kind of investigation.”

So whether or not you’re in support of having the government regulate yet another faction of our lives, I think all Internet users, particularly marketing and PR professionals, can agree that a more authentic, honest exchange of information will be an overall improvement.

Social media is changing the way companies and brands connect and interact in real time with customers and consumers. Specific social media platforms may be fads, but social media itself is here to stay and any company that wants to attract new customers and build their sphere of influence needs to learn how to use it effectively and responsibly.

Currently, there seems to be a whirlwind of confusion blowing through the marketing world as to who should manage social media initiatives and develop the strategies that drive a company’s participation in the Groundswell. What’s more, the recent rise of social media marketing in a struggling economy has created a mad dash for dwindling marketing dollars among PR, interactive, Web marketing and traditional advertising agencies. With traditional ad spending projected to drop considerably over the coming year, the competition to manage a client’s social media marketing initiatives is starting to heat up. Here are three reasons why the public relations industry is best positioned to spearhead and manage social media marketing efforts.

1. Social Media is a long-term commitment to listening, conversing, and understanding customers and consumers – which will cultivate brand advocates. Only with a clear sense of internal purpose should a company enter into this online/real time conversation. Thus, social media marketing should start with and revolve around positioning and messaging – both cornerstones of the public relations industry and its strategic planning process. If there was ever a time for a company to step back and understand who they are, what they believe, and what they can deliver – this is it.
2. Strong branding has always been about influence rather than control. The way to achieve influence is not through one-way advertising channels, but through observing and participating in two-way conversations with key audiences – something PR professionals practice daily. Social media should be used to help shape influence and opinion rather than attempting to control it, and its the storytelling element of Public Relations – making a company’s vision and values come to life through powerful stories – that translates most effectively in this area.
3. Although many view social media as technology-driven, it is unmistakably communications-driven. Social media is still “media,” and PR professionals specialize in working with those that create content or “editorial,” – and the opportunities or issues (crises) that may arise from such content. Interactive agencies may have a strong handle on the technology that drive the individual platforms, but at the end of the day it’s the conversation, message or call to action that matters – technology is only the vehicle that enables such. Like writing, pitching, client counsel or crisis management, social media is another important communication tool. Without competent communication skills, the tool becomes useless and the social media marketing initiative will fail. In many ways social media is simply public relations in an online setting.

As blogging is a form of social media, and social media is about information sharing and community dialogue, I’d like to end each NST blog post with a musical recommendation. Spevak’s “Hot Pick” for June is The Felice Brothers. If you like Dylan, The Band or just plain darn good songwriting – check these guys out!