I’d really appreciate it if you would help her out by answering these questions in the comments.

Thanks so much, and please share with your networks.

1. How does this type of marketing better a business or the marketing plan?
2. How do you explain to a client that social media platforms are the best marketing for their business or product?
3. Why advertise using social media? What is the benefit?
4. Do you find that a certain age group or culture is influenced more? Who do you gear the advertising to?
5. Do some of the companies exclusivly use social media?
6. Do you have studies or test that give you information about who you are marketing to?

I answered him in a series of DMs on Twitter, but as I went on I realized that I was onto something. People who get carried away with their personal brand do so because they aren’t comfortable with the public perception of who they really are because they aren’t comfortable with themselves, hence … THEY LIE ONLINE.

Tyler Durden is right. You aren’t your job, you aren’t the contents of your wallet and you aren’t your … well you get the point. Nor, however, are you the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. You are who you are and if you aren’t happy with it and need to write happy-happy joy-joy tweets so as not to offend the lily-white sensibilities of our current society, then maybe, just maybe you should re-evaluate your own priorities and whether you really care if your thousands of followers would want to have lunch/coffee/cocktails with you if they knew deep down who you were.

My personal brand? Honestly, I have a very strange personal brand. Between the social marketing stuff (which is less & less what I do on Twitter or Facebook) it’s mainly about life, my kid, my wife, hockey, current events or pop culture. You know, REAL STUFF THAT MATTERS TO ME.

I want to be the Anthony Bourdain of the MSP marketing world. I’m the misanthrope with whom people want to drink (or so I’ve been told.) Ok, maybe that’s not accurate though in a way it would be awesome. The truth is that I do seem that way from time to time because I am honest about myself, my life, my hopes, dreams, fears and the crap that happens on a daily basis. The problem is that too many people have become accustomed to the cause du jour or not offending or not wanting to be a Negative Nelly.

Screw it.

Sometimes the world needs to see some negativity. Know why? Look outside.

Sometimes life sucks and it’s ok to bitch about it. I can’t sell my house because it isn’t worth anything. The Wild have missed four playoffs in a row. My body attacks my joints. My father has a leaky mitral valve and a fluttering ventricular something or another.

THIS STUFF SUCKS.

It’s ok to say that. It doesn’t change the fact that my life is fucking awesome. I love it. I’m happier now than I have been in 20 years, seriously. I have a wife and child who love me, I have a job I thoroughly enjoy and have hobbies that bring a smile to my face and I don’t take stupid stuff too seriously. Yet, because I dare to pull back the curtain on the seedy underbelly or potentially rain on someone’s parade, I’m a misanthrope. Fine. Whatever makes you sleep at night as you continue to lie to yourself and all of your Social Media “friends”. Yawn.

For me, I try to make Twitter or Facebook as much like a real conversation with me as possible. But … I’m so brutally “me” that it’s easy. Too many people here are fake and/or one-dimensional, usually because they are focused on their personal brand rather than focusing on authenticity, vulnerability and personal relationships. The world is filled with sycophants and hangers-on, but they don’t help you become a more true and honest version of you.

It’s sad, it’s sterile, it’s fake and ultimately the facade will crumble. That’s my take.

We understand that the Page is where brands publish content, but now that content can become ads and sponsored stories. You are no longer limited by Marketplace Ads or Sponsored Stories in the right sidebar with a call to action of “Liking” the content.

One of the biggest concerns to overcome on Facebook is the “Field of Dreams” strategy. If you build it, they won’t necessarily come. A very, very small percentage of highly “viral” and engaged content is truly organically viral. The vast majority of what people perceive as “viral marketing” has a large paid media component behind it. Facebook just made it easier to get your content in front of a larger audience than ever before.

Reach Generator

A small percentage of your fans continue coming back to your Page. That doesn’t mean that they don’t see or engage with your content on Facebook, but it means that they likely see it in their News Feed. What appears in your News Feed is based upon an algorithm called Edge Rank. The Edge Rank is a tricky beast. It uses a variety of factors such as relevancy of subject, your personal engagement with (likes, shares, comments) the content, the engagement of your friends with the content and how frequently you visit Facebook (among many other things). As a result, Facebook estimates that brands reach, on average, 16% of fans each week. That’s right. 16%.

With Reach Generator, Facebook guarantees that you reach 75% of your fans each month and an estimated 50% of fans each week in a simple, always-on way. Your fans will see your content as a sponsored story on the right-hand side of their homepage or in their news feed on desktop or mobile. In early studies, Facebook has seen engagement with brands and content (likes, comments, and shares) increase by up to 2x. In addition, Facebook reports that sponsored stories in the news feed receive a 5-10x higher click-through rate than standard Marketplace Ads. This is interruptive marketing at its most effective. At fMC, they noted that Dr. Pepper saw 140% increase in PTAT (People Talking About This) when adding a sponsored story and Ben & Jerry’s reached 98% of their total audience in one month & increased ROI on sales 3-to-1 by “featuring” their best fans stories on their Timeline. Yes, Ben & Jerry’s turned user generated content into an advertisement activation to increase engagement on Facebook. They paid money to get the voice of their community in front of as many people as possible and it helped them increase their sales ROI to 3:1.

From what we can tell very early on in investigation, Reach Generator utilizes real-time Facebook Page Insights (more on that later) to help select the post with the highest potential for “virality”, and utilizes the new ad placement offerings to amplify its reach to your audience. These new placements finally include mobile. As more and more people access Facebook on their mobile device, it only makes sense that marketers put their content in front of users where they live.

Premium on Facebook

The biggest spenders will have access to the newest and widest range of sponsored stories and ad placements. The Brand Page becomes “mission control” for all marketing on Facebook, including Sponsored Stories in the right sidebar to non-fans, in the News Feed to fans, on mobile devices, on the logout page and includes the ability to turn any post into an ad. Yes, you can use Premium on Facebook to deliver events, questions, videos, photos, status updates and links to fans and non-fans alike on any of the Facebook ad placements. Status posts will be limited to 150 characters and are text only, Questions will display no more than four answers or three answers plus a “see more” link, otherwise there will be a limit of 90 characters for text associated with video, photo, event or link posts.

There was a question as to whether or not Premium was going to eliminate the traditional ad offerings on Facebook, but Standard Premium Ads, Premium Ads for Applications and Marketplace ads remain unchanged.

You have quality content, share it where it is most likely to be seen and shared. Use your content to maximum effect by engaging your audience in influencing their networks. Premium on Facebook delivers your content to as many people as possible to get people interacting with your brand and talking about you, while showcasing that engagement to the friends of your fans.

Facebook has four tips for the best way to integrate your content with their newest product offerings.

1. Have Reach Generator always on so that you can continuously reach and engage 75% of your fans.
2. Use Premium on Facebook to drive awareness for events and activities. For example, you should deliver your stories using Premium on Facebook for a product launch, movie premier or sales event.
3. Use bold visuals. Grab your audience’s attention by using simple images with highly-saturated colors to stand out against the site’s white/blue background.
4. Photos and videos drive 2x engagement. Engaging content is an effective way to drive more stories into news feed. Photos should be uploaded to a Facebook album for best quality and should not contain text overlays.

All this said, we are in no way saying that money = engagement here. You still need a carefully planned approach and highly relevant and engaging content, but these tools can help widen your scope, putting your best content in front of the people with whom your brands wants to communicate.

Real-Time Insights

Finally, marketers will have the ability to monitor engagement with their Page and content in real time. This means that you can make a post, see how well it is performing with regards to engagement and reach, then either edit, pin or even promote it through Reach Generator and Premium on Facebook. Real time insights allows marketers to be much more nimble in their editorial planning when they see the kinds of posts that are or are not performing and alter their tactics as a result.

Measuring Reach

It’s always imperative to know how many people are seeing your branded content. And (with money) it just got easier. Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) utilizes Facebook as a source of data. You can now measure the accuracy of online campaigns in delivering content to the targets across platforms. Paired with Facebook Insights, you have visibility to the breakdown of paid, organic and viral reach on your Page and can evaluate reach, engagement and people talking about your content.

Gathering Customer Insights

Social media professionals always extol the virtues of utilizing social channels as a way of gathering insight into your brand reputation and capturing the voice of the consumer. Facebook is now offering opt-in audience polls to allow brands to learn from their fans, friends of fans, and non-fans. Advertisers have the ability to run ads to target segments and test for engagement with creative and messaging within Facebook.

Brand Tracking

Nielsen’s Brand Effect product provides the opportunity to conduct opt-in polls on Facebook to evaluate performance of campaigns on high-level awareness metrics like brand recall, message awareness and purchase consideration.

As we see more and more money moved to social marketing as part of a larger digital strategy, the ability to measure performance of campaigns and advertisements on a granular level as well as a higher brand awareness level is paramount to securing budget. These new products must be evaluated for your digital mix. You have (hopefully) spent resources on planning and creating engaging content. Deliver it to as many fans as possible with Reach Generator. Increase engagement and create new fans with Premium on Facebook. Gather more insight about the efficacy of your content marketing with real-time insights, opt-in polling and the new Nielsen products then include all of this into your overall digital dashboards to see the impact your social strategy has on your business objectives to increase your budgets!

Facebook extols the virtues of their redesigned Pages in three distinct ways.

Pages allow brands to:

1. Express brand identity with features like cover photo and Page timeline.
2. Reach and engage brand audience on the web and on mobile.
3. Respond to people in a quick, more personal way.

That’s all well and good and we would love nothing more than to get into a deep discussion about how these changes may alter the Facebook component of your social/digital strategy, but let’s cut to the chase. The new Pages are available now, but everyone will be forced to adopt the new Page by March 30, 2012 so it’s important to understand what you need to do tactically.

What is the impact of the new Pages on day to day operations?

• Cover Photo and Profile Picture

The first thing to understand is that the Cover Photo and Profile Picture are two completely different things serving different purposes. The Profile Picture is the image that is displayed as a thumbnail in news feed stories, ads, sponsored stories and comments. Choose an image that is branded, easily identifiable and looks good at both 180×180 pixels and 32×32 pixels.

The Cover Photo is the top image visible on your Page and will establish the experience on your Page. The photo can be up to 850×315 pixels. Size, however, is not the only limitation. There can be no call to action indicated (this includes “Like us” or “Share” or “Sale!”, “25% off now”), nor contact information (information like url, email, phone, etc belong in the “About” section).

• Landing or Welcome tabs

The ability to direct a new visitor to a welcome tab is gone. It’s really that simple. Everyone who visits your page will see the Timeline and your Cover Photo. The key is now to use Timeline to tell a compelling story and utilize creative to capture the attention then use relevant and engaging content to keep people coming back. Apps will continue to exist and we will talk about those a little later in this post.

• Pinning Posts

Much like the new Twitter brand pages, you have the ability to pin Wall posts to the top of your Timeline. Stories will have a star icon when you hover over them. Click on that star to widen the post and click the pencil icon to pin it to the top, hide or delete. This makes calls to action, custom apps or featured content able to garner more attention.

• Historical Timeline

Just like your personal Timeline, you now have the ability to capture the history of the brand on Facebook. Utilizing Timeline, you can upload archival photos, feature milestones of the brand and showcase the brand narrative. Starbucks, for example, has photos of their first store. Ben & Jerry’s includes early advertisements and English soccer powerhouse Manchester United highlights photo albums of each trophy ceremony in club history; a very cool way to educate the public on the history of the brand. While this will likely require a content strategy and some creative development many brands have a compendium of assets in their archives. Timeline gives those brands a great way to utilize those assets.

• Apps, Photos, Videos, Likes

A series of panels housing custom apps, photo albums, videos, Pages your Page like and the People who Like your page appears directly under the Cover Photo and above the Timeline. Here is where you can highlight your custom apps, and you have the ability to choose the order of everything other than Photos (which will always be first), but you only have a total of 12 panels so choose wisely.

• Administration and Messaging

All activity is now managed from the Administrator Panel. The activity log is where you review all of your posts and stories as well as where you access Insights and are notified when people post to your Timeline or message you directly. Oh yeah, that’s new also. All people can now send private messages to Pages, which should make taking customer service or other sensitive matters offline. In addition to the Administrator Panel, brands can finally change the name of the Fan Page! If you happened to misspell your brand name or the brand name has changed, you can request a change.

What is the big picture?

Ultimately, the Fan Page is all about engagement. So how do brands increase engagement?

Be interesting. Use your creative. Yes, it’s important to have a variety of types of posts, but the numbers don’t lie. Using visuals in Wall posts generate twice the engagement of a text-only post (on average). This will likely only increase with Timeline and Premium on Facebook (more on that later). Timeline’s tile format means that images are larger and the ability to engage with photos is much improved. Yes, there will be more creative resources required, but the flexibility to create an on-brand experience is much improved and will create lasting relationships with consumers.

Your Facebook content strategy will likely require evaluation. How will you ensure that your content is visually engaging? How does the brand narrative flow on the new Timeline? When posting, what milestones will you feature? Which posts should be pinned to the top? How will you work with your colleagues in various business groups to ensure that calls to action and featured campaigns receive the attention they deserve? A well-defined editorial calendar in coordination with Facebook Insights, Premium on Facebook and your overall digital dashboards will go a long way to assist you in making your Facebook Page a strong performer in your digital mix.

Gizmodo: Google just made Bing the best search engine

Did Google’s overhaul of search results to add “Your World” (essentially including Google+ further into the algorithm) sufficiently alter the results enough to no longer provide the most relevant information about a topic? Does it give too much weight to content sources engaging on Google+? What about content your social networks and circles promote? Do you care if your friends have “+1-ed” an article? One guy thinks Google has gone too far this time and the Twitter leadership tends to agree. This article even goes so far as to argue that Google violates anti-trust legislation and offers Microsoft’s Bing as the best option. Ironic, no?

Forbes: CES Wrap: The end of the editorial, commercial divide is here

As another Consumer Electronics Show ends, Forbes looks at how brands are utilizing events and their own products as channels to serve up content, beyond traditional product placement. As editorial content and product offerings continue to evolve new ways to provide revenue streams, is the separation between “church” and “state” becoming blurred? As smart TVs and content served on computers, tablets & mobile device increases, the ability for marketers to deliver branded commercial content alongside editorial content becomes seamless. How long until the average consumer is no longer able to delineate the paid from the unpaid?

Pinterest, out for a little over a year, the upstart social product tagging aggregator is taking off, now reaching over 3 million users. Mashable looks at the Top Brand on Pinterest and evaluates 5 Ways Brands Can Use Pinterest to Boost Customer Engagement. These are interesting because I’ve been trying to find ways to promote the use of the site for a year, but now that I have a different type of client base, I can take these examples as a springboard to a larger conversation. Of course, it helps that the Pinterest numbers are growing. What brands do you follow on Pinterest? What do you like about them? Is it about personality? A way to find new product offerings?

In a Gorilla Costume delivers a great infographic (which still continue to drive huge traffic. People like their facts delivered in this format. I think it says something about our attention span) on The Real Cost of Social Media. Many of us already understand this concept, but this graphic will be helpful for taking to the client and saying “free isn’t really free.”

That’s what I read last week. How about you?

“All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a while, the first things you’ll see are top photos and statuses posted while you’ve been away. If you check Facebook more frequently, you’ll see the most recent stories first. Photos will also be bigger and easier to enjoy while you’re scrolling through.” – A Facebook spokesperson

News Feed

• Curates friends’ posts
• Uses number of factors to decide whether they deserve top billing in News Feed
• More prominently display pictures
• New settings to give users post-by-post control over the feed

Ticker

• Real-time updates
• Fewer email notifications

Facebook is deciding what’s important for you to see.

“Just as we aim to show you the most relevant updates in your News Feed today, we use a variety of signals to decide whether a story might be interesting or important. For example, this may include changes about your employer, school, relationship status or city, as well as things like the number of likes or comments on a post. For example, if a friend’s post gets dozens of comments or likes, it’s likely to be a top story.” - A Facebook spokesperson

Users can control what becomes a top story by interacting with their own feeds.

“You can click on a top story and tell Facebook that it’s not relevant to you, or you can mark a post a top story,”

Likely future changes

• A media platform
• More e-commerce integration
• More visibility to Facebook Credits
• May also include an HTML5-based mobile platform (access to video on iOS)

What does this mean for brands?

Honestly it’s a little early to determine the overall impact, however, early analysis is that prominent appearance in the News Feed of fans will rely more and more on engagement with content. The more frequently fans Like or Comment, the more likely it is that more of fans and friends of fans will see content in their News Feed. This isn’t new. What is new, however, is the placement. Will content be in the Top Stories or in the Recent Stories (below the Top Stories)? The change to Recent Stories is important because early indications are that everything to which a user is subscribed will appear, whereas prior to the change it users needed to update settings from the default, otherwise all they ever saw was Top Stories.

How can brands help push content to the Top Stories?

• Ask for the “Like” or comment.
• Post compelling calls to action or engage in conversation
• Load more photos & videos
• Don’t over-post on a daily basis.
• Post seven days a week

More information as it becomes available and as we see the impact of the Top Stories on brand pages.

I’ve told this story over and over again, but my favorite day started as the scariest day of my life. January 31, 2010, the day Ingrid Arabella Eide entered the world and changed our lives. Every single day since then has been better than the day before because I’ve been able to have one more day with my girls.

This one is very easy for some people. Many folks have a book that changed their lives, a book to which they can go back over and over again and in which they can find meaning. I know someone who reads the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy every fall. Michelle can read Catcher in the Rye over and over again. I honestly cannot think of a book that has had a profound impact on me.

Honestly, as someone who loves to read, it make me sad that I can’t come up with one book that I can go to as my favorite book. I mean, I’ve read a high percentage of the “greatest 100 books” list the BBC put together, but can’t come up with one that sticks in my head.

So, I’m asking you, the public, to give me your favorite book in comments, and I’ll begin my reading list from there. Help me out?

I have no willpower when it comes to exercising and living a healthy life. Sure, I have the greatest of intentions, I start a “diet” and I begin working out or going to the gym, but allow life to get in the way.

I hate what I have allowed my body and my health to become, but I give up all too easily. I say “I’ll just take today off” or “I’ll go after Ingrid goes to bed” or “I’ll cheat today and get back on the diet tomorrow” but what I’m really saying is “it’s too hard and I don’t see results right away so I’m going to give up because I’m pathetic and lazy.”

I know I need to live healthily for Ingrid. I need to set a good example and I need to live a long life to be around for her and for Michelle, but honestly, I just have so much trouble sticking with it. I need someone to kick me in the ass and force me to take care of myself. It’s just too easy to give up and buy fat pants and bigger shirts. I hate it. I have such great clothes that I can’t wear and I miss being able to hit Theo Wirth and ride the singletrack for hours, but I’m just too lazy to get into good enough shape.

I need help. Badly.

Fall of 1992. I was a preparing for my junior year at Anoka High School.

I was a singer, but not just any singer, I saw myself as the next generation of the East Coast Family. I listened to Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD and the rest. I was a fan of tight harmonies, four or six part a cappella R&B and my favorite groups and the seniors to whom I looked up were all firmly entrenched in the culture and lifestyle. That included wearing matching outfits with the rest of the members of the group. We took our cue from the groups we saw on MTV and frankly as a bunch of suburban kids we looked incredibly stupid.

I took it to a whole different level. I loved my cross colours. I had huge, baggy purple jeans, brightly colored Reebok Pumps, t-shirts and button-down emblazoned with the Cross Colours logo, and honestly, I looked ridiculous.

Fashion for fashion’s sake was my ethos. I didn’t realize until the next summer exactly what I looked like, and for some reason my parents went along with it. They enabled my poor fashion sense and never made a peep as to how dumb I looked.

However, the meaning behind the clothes was positive. It was about racial harmony and education and pride. Yeah, we were suburban white kids who wanted to be Boyz II Men, but we didn’t deserve what we received. Catcalls at the mall, people calling us unprintable names, chasing us into parking lots trying to get us to fight. Yes, I looked foolish, but what I wish I could forget was how easily I allowed those idiots to change my behavior and quickly give up my look.