Web Strategy by Jeremiah

I’m here in SF at the F8 developer conference sponsored by Facebook. While the primary thrust of F8 Facebook announcements was for developers, I mentally translate what this means for web strategists at brands at Fortune 5000s.

One key announcement is Facebook Connect which allows for authentication on 3rd party websites. Then users can visit third party sites, login with their Facebook ID, connect with their friends and update their Facebook newspage –all without visiting Facebook.com

Essentially, the Facebook experience extends further into the web –beyond their walled garden.

Facebook Connect allows users to authenticate using their Facebook ID
Similair to OpenId (which coincidently was adopted by competitor MySpace) third party developers can allow website visitors to login to their website using their Facebook ID. This “Passport” system (much like what Microsoft tried to do) will let members leave comments on third party sites –as well as identify their friends on these sites.

Facebook Connect Will Allow third party sites to update Facebook Newspage
Facebook Connect allows applications, devices, websites to allow third party sites to embed a small piece of code on your site. Then, as users come to your site, (assuming they are Facebook users) could login to Facebook from your site and choose to share activities that would be shared on their newsfeed on Facebook.

Example via Techcrunch: “Mike Philips from Citysearch is taking the stage. He says they are launching a new site, where sharing information is a big piece. They are integrating with Facebook Connect. When a user looks for a hotel, restaurant, etc., Citysearch already has lots of reviews and data, but not a way to link up reviews from friends.”

Recommendations for Brands
Interestingly, I talked to some Facebook employees, and they weren’t even looking as far as I was, (which means I’m doing my job well) so this prediction is something to still watch.

Brands should watch how this impacts the few launch partners first, let them sort out the bugs, and put this on the roadmap. Brands that have websites that have social actions (such as buying a product, rating, ranking, or leaving comments) should keep this in mind, as they can now extend the actions to Facebook streams.

Brands that are already trying to reach the Facebook audience (white collar workers and college students) should plan on experimenting with Facebook Connect as it can bring additional social functionality to corporate websites.

Your logins could become less relevant if Facebook adoption continues to take off in particular markets, for example, brands that are already trying to reach this segment should be ready to adopt Facebook Connect. I ran this Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO Living Social, who agreed this is a big change.

Yesterday, I spoke to a room full of Analyst Relations (AR) and Public Relations (PR) professionals at a large tech vendor. I was asked to lead a discussion about the impacts of social media to their daily life.

I’ve been hearing about these questions from AR folks themselves, as well as from Forrester’s AR services team, and analysts such as Ray Wang . Hopefully, this will kick off a discussion and we can collaboratively share and learn.

10 Questions Analyst Relations Professionals Have About Social Media

1. Is social media a medium to influence the influencers?
2. Are influencers impacted by social media usage of clients, vendors, and media?
3. Now that many are creating their own messages is message control realistic?
4. Can AR and PR benefit from listening to social media?
5. Can AR and PR benefit from using social media to talk?
6. How do AR folks, who are traditionally accustomed to deep, often in person relationships benefit from this?
7. Does this really mean more work for me?
8. If our competitors use this, do they have a leg up on us?
9. How to we quantify the ROI of our efforts?
10. Leave a comment if you’ve got a point of contention.

Self admittedly, I’m new to this topic, and many others have been thinking this through more carefully. I do however represent a new type of analyst that uses these tools to support, promote, and enhance, some parts of my research (it’s not good for deep analysis nor accurate trending), so you’ll want to observe my behaviors carefully as I make mistakes and also figure things out.

If you want to learn more, subscribe to Jonny Bentwood, SageCircle’s Carter Lusher, or talk to the Forrester AR folks that are thinking this through much deeper than I am. Also, see this List of Resources, Profiles, Indexes, Blogs, Companies and Information for the Analyst Industry.

Update: Carter Lusher just pointed me to this list of Analyst Relations pros that are on Twitter, half are from Tech, and half are from agency.

If you work at an interactive agency or at a brand that’s interested in marketing at social networks, this post is for you.

Agencies and Brands unsure what to do
I can see the deal now, and I’m sure many of you have been in these meetings (client or agency side). The agency knows the brand manager is familiar, comfortable, with traditional interactive marketing campaigns in the past. So, the agency comes to the table repurposing a successful microsite now to meet a “Facebook strategy”. The brand manager nods, signs off, and the agency gets to work. Weeks to months later, the campaign launches on Facebook, with many of the computer-to-human features that you’d see on a microsite but it doesn’t allow self-expression or the ability to share. As such, only a few folks show up, and it’s written off as a ‘learning experiment’ (corporate translation: fail)

Fail: many brands repurposing microsite strategies
In my recent report “The best and worst of social network marketing” most brands are doing it wrong. In fact, I’m hearing of more and more cases where interactive agencies are repurposing interactive marketing (human to computer) and go to brands (who don’t know what to do) and present a 6-7 digit proposal for a Facebook strategy. Unfortunately, many brands are spending a tremendous amount of resources and missing the most important opportunities. (Deloitte research also backs this up -WSJ)

Solitaire, a terrible party game
Have you noticed that the card game solitaire doesn’t make for a good party game? It’s the same thing when it comes to social networks. Social networks are about self expression, communication, and networking and sharing with others –it’s more akin to social card games like poker, gin, or even mah jong. The core elements of these games encourage sharing, trading, communicating with other players of the party.

Many brands are deploying solitaire games at a party, where everyone is already playing poker. The same concept applies to marketing efforts on social networks. In our research, many were developing efforts that was two-way between the brand and a single member (interactive marketing). Instead, brands missed the core behavior of member to member interaction between the community, therein lies the true opportunity.

Socialization, the missing link
What does this opportunity look like? Getting the members to self-express on your behalf, communicate to each other, and spread the brand values to their own network at a rapid pace. Social networking tools allow for rapid spread of information to ones network –providing they choose to participate in this behavior.

It’s interesting to note that the agency that delivered the only passing grade was Federated Media, who doesn’t come from the traditional interactive agency realm, but instead first with a blog advertising networks, and is slowly expanding into social marketing. Unfortunately, I’ve heard concerns from some that they may not be able to scale to meet enterprise needs that other large existing firms offer, so we’ll have to see if they can grow –while maintaining flexibility.

So, as you start to shop around for ideas to meet your objectives for your social marketing activities, remember that repurprosing the traditional microsites is missing out on the social behaviors that are native to social networks.

Understand the different forms of web marketing
Also, if you need a crash cours on the many different types of marketing available to you learn about the many forms of Web Marketing for 2008, the list grows every year.