on Sunday I gave a lecture at The Marker’s Customer Experience Conference. I spoke about: “The relationship between the brand and the consumer on social networks: From flirt to love.”

How should brands engage with consumers on social networks? You’ll see that the relationship between brands and consumers on social networks is very similar to the relationship between couples.  The presentation displays three examples of  brands that handle their social media efforts differently. HP, the third brand, clearly exemplifies how giving back to your community, being responsive and listening before selling is the best policy. Please note that the presentation is in Hebrew.

This post originally appeared on The Next Web on June 14th, 2010

If I were to ask you to put a face to the major players involved in foreign exchange, you’d probably think: Male, 50’s or 60’s, graying at the sides, stern faced, three pieced suit, European.

Right or wrong, I’d bet any currency you want that you didn’t conjure up a 25 to 35 year old male with long hair, jeans, and some extra cash to burn on the side.

Yet, if social media continues to infect the forex market as it has begun to do, the latter image could very well be the “face” of the next major FX player.

How could this be? Let’s backtrack slightly to put things in perspective.

When people refer to the “Major Players” of forex, they’re usually referring to any one of the following six institutions:

1. Central Banks - Control countries’ monetary policy with the attempt to grow their respective domestic economies.
2. Banks - Trade billions each day in hedging maneuvers or in speculation attempts to capitalize on price fluctuations.
3. Multi National Corporations - With global business operations, forex is an excellent tool for MNC’s to mange payments of international accounts.
4. Hedge Funds - The massive liquidity of forex makes it an irresistible market for large fund managers to dedicate significant portions of their portfolios toward currency speculation.
5. Retail Brokers - Usually individuals or small groups managing multiple accounts for a total daily trading volume averaging in the billions.
6. Speculators - These are the individual traders who attempt to profit through the close watch of currency pair movement by buying or selling pairs based on pricing trends.

Although forex is technically a completely free market – in theory leaving all six major categorical players operating on a level playing field – there remains a perceived difference, in much of the public’s view, between the first five institutional players and the individual speculator/trader.

Having an a priori understanding that every major player has their own modus operandi in foreign exchange (central banks -stabilize, MNC’s – hedge, fund managers – speculate etc.), many would-be traders believe that the individual speculator suffers from a significant handicap next to these forex juggernauts in two key respects.

First, your average individual trader often lacks the deep financial coffers available to larger institutions, affording them a far smaller margin for error. In an aggressive bull market, such security protection can lead to risky pair movement trends triggered by larger institutions that individual traders should be more cautious of, when considering whether or not to jump on the trend wagon.

Of course free market defenders will say that individual traders should know better and be more incisive in their trading, pinpointing the particular nature of specific catalysts driving major market shifts instead of behaving more like a sheep in a wolf pack. The fact remains however that the individual trader needs to proactively search for the what, when and where of market influencing forces while larger institutions have entire teams dedicated to these tasks.

Which bring us to our second handicap, mainly lack of manpower and the subsequent knowledge gap. Large institutions have top professionals scouring the news for trend indicators and are perpetually planning their strategies based on informed daily, monthly and quarterly outlooks – while at the same time maintaining a diligent watch for unforeseen game changers.  Certainly the same information (if not the expert factorial analysis) is out there for the sophisticated trader to pick up himself. However, for the uninitiated, who have no clue as to what to be looking for, let alone where to find it, this reality created a stigma fostering trepidation amongst would-be traders and a degree of cynicism amongst novices.

So, the rise of the internet saw the dismantling of one barrier preventing average people from entering forex (lack of adequate funds to afford a brokering service), only to be replaced by another (lack of knowledge and resources for informed and influential trading).

In some ways, this new barrier was seen as even more restrictive than its predecessor in that it took the form of a perception. Born and harbored by the online user themselves, in their mind, online brokerages were viewed as borderline versions of respectable brokerage houses – at best, or a slightly more dressed up version of online gambling – at worst.

However, just as the advent of the internet has removed the physical barrier to forex, social media is steadily removing the perceptual barrier, and all accompanying stigmatisms to boot. The ability to collaborate trading strategies and market predictions while tapping the overall global knowledge base, are all advantages social media is bringing to the table for online trading firms. Social media established the infrastructure necessary for a truly global online forex community that could eventually lead to a virtual collective trading block, matching (and potentially dwarfing) the trading power and influence of those major institutions we mentioned earlier, when it comes to driving market shift.

At this point, any predictions about the long term effects of social media on global forex remains speculative at best, but there is no denying that current trends are making such an eventuality seem ever more likely. To illustrate these trends we’ll take a look at various social media efforts of some leading forex service providers in the online world, to see how each of them are using social media to change the way people trade:

• eToro - eToro is an online broker, connecting its internal community via a built in chat feature to their platform. The chat allows eToro members to canvas anyone else on the platform for insights into choice currency pairs, daily trends, trading strategies or anything else people are willing to share over a chat network. They also provide an inside look at their top traders’ current positions on major currency pairs, giving new traders a peak at what’s hot amongst the pros.
• Currensee - Currensee is not an online broker but rather an information sharing platform. Its goal is to make it easy for traders with similar trading interests to find each other and connect. Connected traders from different parts of the world not only share insights and strategies, but can actually see each others’ positions in an easy to read layout, allowing them to collaborate efforts in a team-like framework. Like eToro though, you have to be a member in order to take advantage of their service.
• Daily Forex - Daily Forex is also an information service and does a decent job of making order out of chaos. By providing guides and reviews for the many forex resources on the web, Daily Forex helps online users evaluate the various brokers, courses, auto trading platforms and signal providers, so users can choose what best suits their individual needs. They also post news updates and informative articles on everything to do with forex.
• easy-forex- easy-forex is an online dealer who opted not to reinvent the wheel, and instead has taken full advantage of all major social media outlets to create a highly active community of traders. YouTube is used to post recaps of yesterday’s activity and expected trends for the coming trading day, while a daily blog provides expert views and advice on the latest news and events. An active discussion group is maintained on LinkedIn and is used to engage other industry experts while forming strategic connections at the same time. Facebook is used as a central hub for their community providing easy-forex with a direct line of communication with its members and also gives members a way of connecting with each other. Twitter as well is used as a quick way to disseminate real time trading updates to their followers in the form of news, tips and any other useful tidbit able to be summed up in 140 characters or less. Using the most popular third party social media outlets instead of in-house platforms has significantly broadened easy-forex’ reach, allowing them to experience significant community growth since beginning their social media drive.

All these social media efforts add up to a major trend shift in the focus of online forex service providers. Aware of the stereotypes created when forex suddenly opened up to the average person, Online trading companies are quickly racing to close the gaps that make individual trading any less of a rewarding experience than that of trading with a major institution. They’re also coming to the collective conclusion that social media is the best route to achieve this goal.

Strategies like the ones we depicted, especially those that keep an eye out for the most popular current social media tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, have the best chance of not only bringing online forex to the same respected level as that of a traditional brokerage house, but can even go as far as to create a new breed of “major player” in the FX market, one of the people and for the people.

C’mon, just the possibility of seeing central bank officials in jeans and T-Shirts is enough to want this to work.

Disclosure: We proudly manage easy-forex’s social media activity.

How do you measure the ROI of social media? This is a question that we are often asked by companies that want to enter the social media realm but are afraid or unsure of how to prove its success to their superiors. Wanna show your bosses that social media works? Here is a great video from Erik Qualman (@equalman) at Socialnomics which showcases several social media ROI success stories.

Here are the top ten facts you should remember from this video:

1) Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.

2) Wetpaint/Altimeter found companies that widely engage in social media surpass their peers in both revenue and profit.

3) Lenovo has experienced a 20% reduction in activity to their call center since they launched their community website for customers.

4) Burger King invested  less than $50,000 in their Whopper Sacrifice Facebook application and received an estimated return of over $400,000 in press/media value. They received 32 million impressions as a result of this campaign.

5) Blendtec quintupled sales with its “Will it Blend” series on YouTube.

6) Dell has already made $3 million in sales via twitter (I’ve heard this number has already increased to $6.5 million).

7) Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.

8 ) 37% of generation Y heard about the Ford Fiesta via social media BEFORE its launch in the US. 25% of Ford’s marketing budget is spent on digital/social media. They are the only US auto company that didn’t take a government loan.

9) Naked Pizza set a one day sales record using social media: 68% of their sales came via twitter and 85% of their new customers.

10) Software company Genius.com reports 24% of social media leads convert to sales opportunities

As Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairman of CP&B says: “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media….the old media paradigm was “pay to play”. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to “play to play”.

71% of companies plan to increase investments in social  media by an average of 40% because:

1) It’s low-cost marketing

2) Getting traction

3) We HAVE to do it

If you don’t do it, you can be certain that your competitors will.

“Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine” Morgan Johnston, JetBlue Airways

“Our head of social media is the customer”, McDonalds

The time for social media is now.

The guys at Socialnomics have created Social Media Revolution 2, a sequel to their first Social Media Revolution video and it is awesome! Here are 10 reasons why you can’t ignore social media anymore (in case you didn’t figure that out yet):

1) Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old. 96% of them have joined a social network.

2) Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.

3) Facebook added more than 200 million users in less than a year

4) The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females

5) Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

6) Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more twitter followers than the entire populations of: Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama.

7) There are over 200,000,000 blogs

8 ) 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content

9) 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily

10) We will no longer search for products and services. They will find us via social media.

Facebook is more than a social network. It’s a platform that has changed the way we view content on the Web, the way we connect with other people and brands on the Web and the way that we express ourselves on the Web. Now with all the latest developments that Mark Zuckerberg announced during F8 and Facebook’s collaboration with partners such as Yelp and Pandora, we see that Facebook is bringing to life the vision that we all had of a future Web 3.0 where we no longer need to look for information but information finds us. Connections between people and between brands and people are happening everywhere on the Web. Facebook is connecting all these points together into what they call “The Open Graph”.

Zuckerberg writes on Facebook’s blog:

“We think that the future of the web will be filled with personalized experiences. We’ve worked with three pre-selected partners—Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora—to give you a glimpse of this future, which you can access without having to login again or click to connect. For example, now if you’re logged into Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you’ve liked across the web. And as you’re playing music, it can show you friends who also like the same songs as you, and then you can click to see other music they like.”

Facebook is enabling partnering websites to add the like button to their platforms and serve us content based on our interests. From now forward, the Web will be divided for us based on what we like and what we don’t like. At the same time, it’s also enabling us to connect with others who share the same interests as us across various platforms – not just Facebook.

Facebook’s Director of Platform Product Bret Taylor (previously the founder & CEO of FriendFeed) said during F8: “Once you put these ‘like’ buttons all around your site, the like buttons power a whole suite of social plugins, an “activity streams” plugin will show all activities from the Facebook user’s friend list on that third-party site. A “recommendations” plugin will provide suggested content to users. “It’s not just 10 most e-mailed articles, this is truly powerful recommendations.”

Facebook launched its Open Graph protocol with 30 partners thus far. This is a major step for Facebook as now my personal dislikes and likes are not only to be found on Facebook but rather they travel with me across various sites on the Web.

What does all this imply for the future? Does this mean the end of any small amount of privacy we still had left on the Web or is this the best thing since sliced pie? I must agree with the latter. For a long time now I’ve praised Facebook for all of its improvements and developments throughout the years. I think that Facebook does an amazing job at continuously improving its platform and this is the reason for its success. As Facebook continues to increase its user base (already at 500 million users worldwide), it continues to get better over time. Facebook is at the heart of the open graph, connecting all the dots. The only drawback? The fact that Facebook controls this Open Graph. One must be a Facebook user to enjoy all this and it will become harder over time for people to opt out of becoming a part of this revolution. A truly open platform, not controlled by one commercial company may be thought of as a more ideal situation but I must admit, that given Facebook’s leadership and innovation in the last few years, I trust Facebook in leading us on the right path to a universal open graph where all people and brands are connected in the best way possible.

When planning their future Web presence, businesses today must make sure to keep the Open Graph in mind. They will have to do so in order to survive in the digital space. With such information overload that users face today from various streams, brands will need to optimize their Web presence based on the information they gather from the Open Graph in order to maintain and increase their client/user base. Otherwise, these companies won’t stand a chance. Social engagement, social data mining, social and geo-targeting those are the keywords to remember and the terms that will lead us forward in this social revolution we are embarking on. All the information we view on the Web will increasingly become more personal, more targeted and at the same time, more open. This idea may be scary to some who fear for their privacy but I believe in the long run will only serve us all to better manage and retain the massive amount of data and increasing number of relationships (with both people and brands) that we need to deal with on a daily basis.

Brands today have the incredible opportunity of interacting with consumers on the #1 social network in the world – Facebook – and creating relationships with them that are long lasting, personal and relevant. Companies today no longer control their own brand, the power has shifted to the masses. It is the public’s desire and feedback that will decide the brand’s fate in the end. Therefore it is clearly apparent that Facebook must play a major role in every brand’s social media marketing plan.

A few facts about Facebook (taken from the site’s blog):

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
• More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
• There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices

Facebook is now the 2nd most visited site in the world after Google and time spent on Facebook is higher than on any other site in most countries. It is clear that Facebook is an important component of any social media marketing plan, if not the most important.

Here are the 10 steps you should follow for the creation of the best Facebook Page for your brand:

1) Open Page - As a company, you should open a Facebook page. I have often seen the mistake of many companies opening a group or a personal profile for a company. Facebook has created Facebook pages for commercial companies to be able to carry on conversations with their consumers. Pages (unlike personal profiles or groups) enable brands to view insights such as fans demographics, number of interactions with fans, etc. Insights which are a necessary part of evaluating and assessing your brand’s marketing activities.

2) Content is king – When you’re initially building  your Facebook page, fill it up with interesting and relevant content. Content doesn’t need to be specifically about your brand. Find insightful articles that have to do with your company’s vision and perspective and post them. Add dynamic content such as screenshots of highlighted areas on your site, videos of explaining your service, stuff that people would be able to look at when they make the decision of joining your fan page or not. You want to make sure that before you start inviting people to your page, you’ll have good high quality content to show them. Make sure to continuously upload great content to your page on a daily basis so that fans will want to see your page on their news feed when they open up their Facebook in the morning.

3) Networking – After you’ve uploaded enough interesting content, suggest your page to relevant members in your network. Obviously the more of a social networker you are and the more connections you’ve already managed to attain in your personal network, the easier this step will be. Keep building your network of connections for the future.

4) Find your target audience – Finding the people within Facebook that will take an interest in your brand and in your campaigns and make sure they know your page exists. Are you a social network for animators? Are you offering a new, healthier product for coffee lovers? Find your relevant audience who’s already on Facebook and let them know that you’re there. In today’s world wide web, people are getting more and more used to information finding them and not vice versa. Those brands that have understood this point and are reaching out to their target audience within Facebook and creating relationships with these individuals, are already placing the competition at a huge disadvantage.

5) Keep the conversation awake – Create live discussions on your page by both utilizing the status feature and also the discussions app. Get your fans involved in your discussions, ask for their feedback, show them you care about what they have to say. Enable a free flow of conversation even if you don’t like to hear what is being said by some folks. Use this opportunity to listen to what people have to say and take control of the conversation. Be happy for the opportunity you’ve been given to win them back as customers. Always make sure to be attentive, patient and answer as quickly as possible. Remember that Facebook doesn’t sleep.

Utilize the information of the crowd to learn more about how to lead your brand forward in the market.

6) Excite people about your brand again and again – Create frequent contests and special campaigns for fans to take part in and reward them for their participation with either social or monetary incentives that have to do with your brand. In this manner you are ensuring that those people who enter your contest are potential future clients who take a true interest in your product.

7) Create a Welcome tab – A Facebook page that says “Howdy” to all the new comers is both welcoming and a good opportunity to let them know what they can find on your page. Utilize it to express the benefits of joining your page, promote special campaigns you’ve got going on at the moment, anything you like. Welcome new fans to your home on Facebook.

8 ) Bring Value – Create other tabs that are relevant to your brand – for example, a “fashion tips” tab if you’re a clothing brand, a “book reviews” tab if you’re a publisher. Build fun applications for fans and potential fans that will not only help you create exposure for your brand but will also give added value to the users who install it.

9) Utilize Facebook’s Insights - How many interactions did you have with fans this week? How many people commented on your posts? Where are your fans located? Are they mostly female or male? The answers to these questions will of course enable you to make better use of your page plan of future activities.

10) Increase your exposure – Promote your Facebook page on your email signature, on your homepage, in other social networks that you’re a part of and in all outgoing materials to bloggers and journalists. Let your employees and customers know about your page so that they can become a part of the conversation.

Building a good, solid Facebook page may look easy and it is the best Facebook pages that excel at making it look so easy, however, maintaing an online community is not at all easy. Just like any community, it has needs and thoughts and opinions and as administrators of a Facebook page we are responsible for keeping its interest and shall I even dare say turning the members of your community to patriots of your brand.

I’ve been in the social media space now for quite a few years and I meet with at least 5 companies each week who have understood the importance of utilizing social media for their businesses but are still afraid of entering their brands into the new media age.

What are they worried about? Here are the top five concerns that I’ve heard from executives and my response to them:

1) They’re afraid they’ll lose control of their brand and open themselves up to negative feedback – When you open a business and start marketing your services and exposing your brand to others, people will start talking about your brand. And this is what you wanted right? This is why you exposed them to your brand in the first place.  People are going to be talking about your brand no matter what. The question is: Do you want to be a part of the dialogue or do you want to just play ostrich and ignore what people are saying? If a person is dissatisfied with your services, do you prefer he opens up this discussion in a “I hate <your brand>” group opened up by another hater or do you prefer that he come to your page and post the complaint there allowing you to respond appropriately and even perhaps win him back as a client?
Social media didn’t create the dissatisfied customer – it only allowed him a platform to express his frustration. If you don’t give him the stage to speak, he will do it elsewhere and believe me, it will cause a great deal more damage to your brand if you’re not there to respond and open to criticism.
When we speak of social media, we speak of conversational marketing – listening before selling, opening a dialogue with the user and not just throwing a blinking banner in his face. Brands need to make that switch in their heads and understand that social media is SOCIAL. Many conversations will be positive and you will have these nice messages recorded for everyone to see publicly – your bosses, your investors, your customers and potential customers:

Some conversations may be negative but these conversations should be seen as welcomed opportunities to gain back customers. If you utilize social media effectively and are alert to what people are saying about you online, then you can also respond in a timely and intelligent manner. When you’re dazed and confused and too afraid to see what people may be saying about you, that’s when the conversation can get out of control and your branding and positioning can go out the window. Companies who understand social media know that by using social media they are increasing the number of positive responses to their brand and making sure to control and decrease the negative responses by showing people that they actually care about what they have to say.

2) They don’t understand it – Companies fear social media because they don’t understand what to do with it, what to talk about, who to turn to. They often time try to do it in-house without the appropriate guidance, fail miserably and then say that social media doesn’t work. Don’t hire your friend’s son who is very active on Facebook to do your marketing strategy for you. Just like you wouldn’t fix your car in-house or do your PR in-house, neither should you start doing social media on your own without having a social media guru at your side. And when I say guru, I mean someone who has had a good track record in creating successful social media campaigns for other companies in the past. Once you have such a guide at your side and you begin to understand what social media is all about, then you will not be afraid of it anymore and you will start to recognize the infinite number of amazing opportunities that social media will open your brand to.

3) The effectiveness of social media is hard to measure - Since social media is still in it’s diapers, it took a little while for tools tracking the ROI on social media campaigns to emerge, however today we have a suite of different tools that allow companies to track even the most minute details in the effectiveness of their social media campaigns. Tools like Google Analytics which allow us to track the traffic coming into our site as well as where it’s coming from has existed for years. Google alerts which allow us to see the blog posts and other sites linking back to our site have also existed for a long time. And we are now seeing an influx of services that not only allow you to easily monitor what people are saying about your brand but also see who are the top influencers, opinion leaders in your industry and more. There are numerous services that allow you to see the top influencers on twitter such as: Twitter grader and twitter analytics services such as Twitalyzer . Facebook also provides its own insights to page admins and enables admins to view information regarding the demographics of their fans and also how many interactions, comments, wall posts, etc. were found on the page. The more we learn about social media, the more tools we get to measure it. Not only are our efforts in the social media realm measurable but social media campaigns also allow us to target specific campaigns to specific niches like no other media today.

4) They’re afraid that employees will be on Facebook and twitter chatting all day – Facebook today has around 350 million users. If Facebook was a nation, it would be the world’s third most populous after China and India. Your employees are there anyway. Why not utilize the fact that they are there to help your cause? When you need to spread the word on Facebook, why not enable your employees to help you or when you finally open that fan page on Facebook, why not allow your employees to become fans and encourage them to take part in your social media activities. Dell for example, who is well known for their great twitter strategy (a strategy which has earned them $6.5 million to date), has around 200 employees working its twitter account, responding to people.

In addition, not allowing your employees to have access to the vast amount of information that can be found on social networks as well as not enabling them to use these networks as research tools nor to network with people in the industry also puts your company at a great disadvantage to your competitors who do allow their employees (and even encourage them) to use social media tools.

5) Social media is costly – This last fear is not only something that companies should not fear but it is also not true. If you consider the millions of people that you can reach using social media as opposed to the cost of buying an ad on TV or buying a banner, you’ll see that social media is one of the most cost efficient ways of reaching your target audience today.

To anyone who still thinks social media is a fad, WAKE UP. It’s not. Social media is here and it’s here to stay. If you took a look at the latest report that came out of Davos regarding social networks, you’ll see that Facebook is now the second most popular site on the internet after Google and that according to Nielsen since February 2009 people have been spending more time on social-networking sites than on e-mail, and the lead is getting bigger. The question for your brand is no longer whether to be there or not to be there. The question is WHEN will you be there and the longer you keep your head in the ground, the more you’ll lose touch with what’s happening out there in the real world.

Great Ostrich pic credit: http://blog.karmona.com

When Blonde 2.0 began to assist HP Israel’s Personal Systems Group with their social media marketing efforts, we found they had no representation in the social media world. A community had not yet been built for the group and their customer base did not have a proper network to turn to for questions and answers. Over the course of a few months’ time, Blonde 2.0 and HP quickly exposed HP Israel’s PSG group to the social media world and began engaging with customers and potential customers in order to increase the group’s brand awareness in the community.
When you build a community from scratch, the target audience you primarily want to attract are community leaders, early adapters and other “movers & shakers” in your industry in order to gain some momentum. Blonde 2.0 launched HP Israel’s Facebook Fan Page in September and started with 0 lonely fans. Since close to a third of Israel’s population has a Facebook profile – 2.5 Million Israelis and the demographic groups we wanted to target were found on Facebook, this social network was a great place to start building a community around HP. We also turned to twitter to reach out to HP’s community, as no other network allows for real-time message updates nor engagement with Israeli industry leaders from the high-tech and digital marketing worlds as Twitter does.
By the end of first month, HP’s fan base on Facebook grew to 150 fans and we noticed an exponential growth each week. By the end of October, HP had 619 fans and by November we reached 810 fans. This quick growth was based on the interesting content we uploaded and our engagement with the fans on the page. We discussed computers, laptops and provided assistance with HP products. We also created all types of interesting activities and contests for the fans to take part in.

Providing incentives for fans and followers to take part in the community is a must when brands take a part in the social media world. A brand should be ready to compensate fans who promote its name both by social incentives as discussed in this post and also by giving fans prizes. In the end of November, early December, we unleashed HP Israel’s first giveaway campaign, asking our fan base to participate in a creative contest that would offer them a chance to win a new HP Mini laptop (the Mini 110c). We wanted to emphasize the product’s easiness of mobility and asked our fans to tell us where they would take their laptop if they won it. We encouraged fans to be as creative as possible, giving them the option to upload videos, sound clips, photos and graphic materials to the fan wall as their contest submission. The response rate was overwhelming and we were amazed at how much fans invested in their creations in order to win. We received over 630 entries within 3 weeks time. The winner of our competition was a creative song writer Nadav Harel who wrote an enthusiastic song about HP: HP song: Cute Little Computer. Nadav received recognition and praise from the community (social incentive) and a new laptop. The HP laptop contest did wonders for our activity and growth of the HP Facebook Fan Page. Our community grew to over 2,580 fans.

Campaigns held on twitter also encouraged HP fans to become more involved in our community. We asked our followers to tweet us a personal experience they had with an HP product. The creators of the three most creative tweets of personal experiences they had with HP products were awarded a bluetooth mouse known as “The Dragon.” During the two weeks of our twitter campaign, HP Israel’s twitter community grew by more than 140 followers.
With twitter, we continually monitor what people say about HP PSG’s products and provide assistance in real time. Below, a user complained that he had not received his computer from the service lab on time. HP Israel quickly intervened to fix the problem and everyone came out of this story happy.

It is always exciting to build a brand’s community from the ground up and watch our marketing efforts and activity grow within the social sphere.

We have learned a few lessons along the way and continue to learn daily from our valued community members.

A few tips for the newbies who haven’t yet led any social media campaigns:

1) Listen to what people have to say about your brand and be responsive to their needs. Don’t be defensive. Be attentive.

2) Always remember to be transparent and honest with the members of your community. Make sure that if you promise something, you make it happen. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong – people appreciate that from a brand.

3) When creating contests, make sure the rules are loud and clear. There’s nothing worse than bitter fans angry after a contest’s rules weren’t made clear in advance.

4) Remember that building a community takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is an online community. Enjoy each one of the phases you go through when building your community and learn from them.

We live in a wonderful age today where brands can interact and have an open communication channel with customers and potential customers. I am happy to share our experiences with the building of one such community. An online community just like an offline community needs to be nurtured with delicate care and fed with content, activity and live discussion at all times in order to keep it buzzing and this is what we aim to achieve above all.

(Guest post by Dorine Sinigaglia)

When talking to clients about social media and its effects on increasing sales of their products and increasing traffic to their site, the most asked, common question is: “That’s great – but what will social media do for us? Show me the money!” – and their point is rightfully valid. For those who still don’t quite understand the long-term effects that social media has on their company, it is rather difficult for them to understand the true purpose for setting aside a budget directly for social media, as they don’t see the monetary effects and gains that social media has on their organization. Even for those few who do understand the purpose for utilizing social media tools,  tracking monetary gains and effectiveness of social media it is still not an easy concept to grasp.

If you found yourself questioning the immediate monetary effects social media efforts have on your company’s growth after reading the above and you too exclaimed in your head “Show me the money!” – I highly suggest you check out Olivier Blanchard‘s clever and entertaining presentation on the Basics of Social Media ROI. In short, Blanchard notes an important point to remember about social media: “Social Media is not free: it takes people, it takes technology and it takes time – all of which are limited resources.” Read on.

We already know that social media takes people (often a whole department) to manage a successful community. We also know there are a number of resources available for ways to reach out to a community using social media tools – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – the list goes on and on. And then there’s the major factor of time. Most people think and practice the popular phrase “time is money.” Yes, time is definitely money, but it is important to remember that  most social media campaigns take some time to develop and spread virally. Managers in corporations often feel the need to “pass” on social media campaigns and jump the gun too soon because they don’t see immediate gains or increase in product sales. They think that the campaigns must obviously not be working. This way of thinking goes against every aspect of social media marketing. Embarrassingly enough – 84% of respondents in a survey taken said that they don’t currently measure the ROI of their social media programs (survey taken in August 2009 – noted in a Mashable article). How can one be so certain that social media doesn’t bring in a return on investment if they don’t even measure it?

As Blanchard notes in his presentation, there are many types of non-financial impacts that when glancing from a distance, one can’t see the immediate effects of in terms of money. Types of non-financial impacts include website visitors, impressions and blog comments, customer complaints, positive press & negative press, Facebook friends and Twitter followers, social mention and retweets, positive WOM and negative WOM, employment applications and coupons distributed. All of these impacts have a direct impact on the financial gains of the company – but they do take time to occur and is not something that can be rushed.

According to Christina Warren in her post HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI, “finding trends and tracking them back to their point of origin is the key to measuring ROI.” It is important to know where you started before you know where you are headed in social media. One cannot state that social media tools aren’t “working” for their company if they didn’t even know whether they had a community before they started. It is important to make clearly defined goals and then track progress along the way. There are numerous helpful tools used to track quantitative results and analytics including Google Analytics, PostRank Analytics and eWebAnalytics (check out more ways to track website traffic here). It is not enough to measure solely quantitative results, as qualitative results are also important measurements of tracking success of social media efforts. Before tracking these, it is crucial to determine what it is you want to measure – is it conversations about your products? If relationships were built with your customers? If customers are happy with your product or are they providing complaints? All of this is important to track but one must first understand their organization’s social media objectives in order to know what results should be expected.

According to Aaron Uhrmacher from Mashable,”statistic-based metrics seems to be the primary way communicators feel they can secure approval and budget for these programs from their management teams” in his post How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business. Measuring solely statistics can be problematic,  as social media ROI is based on several factors that lead to an organization’s sales’ bottom line (as mentioned above). Aside from the numerous social networking sites available, there are also insights that come from an organization’s company blog, their participation in other blogging sites, their PR in the blogosphere and any other viral way of virtually mentioning the company’s brand — and all of these  come into play when measuring the effectiveness of social media. This is why it is almost dangerous to assume that immediate returns will show up from your investment in social media.

Measuring ROI is key to assessing the true impact your social media efforts have on your business and your gross margin. However, measuring it is one thing – knowing what to do with those results in another story. Look for specific trends and user behaviors before and after posting status updates, blog posts and promoting discounts and coupons for the holiday season. Every move counts and its success (or lack thereof) can be tracked with numerous sites and analytical devices. Remember the time factor also. Don’t assume your social media efforts are worthless if you’ve only spent 2 weeks promoting a new product. Large-scale marketing campaigns in social media can take up to 6 months for them to come into full-effect and start driving profit to the company’s bottom line. So take a look at your current community and track what has been done and make attainable goals of what needs to get done in order to grow. Continue to engage with your community, track progress along the way and have patience – as this process will take some time – but is definitely worth the wait.

Dorine Sinigaglia is the Account & Content Manager at Blonde 2.0.

(Flickr image courtesy of Arisey)

If we look back in history , we will find that much before Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, there was ICQ. For anyone who doesn’t know, ICQ was created in 1996 and is now wholly owned by AOL. ICQ was THE pioneer of social media and real time updates. It introduced us to instant messaging and a revolutionary new way to communicate with people instantly in real time. ICQ could have been Facebook or Twitter a long time ago. It’s taken ICQ quite a long time to get back to its status as a social pioneer but now with it’s new client, ICQ is getting back to what it was about all the way from the beginning – a place to interact with your friends everywhere. Everybody Everywhere is after all ICQ’s slogan and being an ICQ veteran myself, I am very excited to announce the launch of the new ICQ 7.

ICQ 7 is a client that brings together all your social interactions from across the Web. Instead of having to open a few different pages and applications to get my friends’ status updates on Facebook, to read tweets of my favorite people and to follow what’s happening on other sites as well such as Youtube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious.  ICQ 7 allows me to use one personal communication tool to integrate all my online social activities.  I am able to syndicate my updates to all of my social networks with a single click and get status updates & tweets from all my friends in my networks in one single platform.

ICQ 7 enables real-time updates from content sharing sites and top social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg and Delicious and will soon announce the integration of local social networks. Found side by side with the ICQ Contact List, users can find a separate tab of real time feeds and updates from their friends from their various social networks. Users will no longer need to open up a new browser and log in to separate networks that they’re members of each time they want to comment on their friend’s updates. From now on, consider ICQ to be your social networks’ one-stop-shop no longer will I need to search for content on different platforms – the content finds me.  ICQ 7′s interface is also improved with software that is fully compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows 7.

My Status: Status updates I make on ICQ can be automatically posted in my other supported networks as well.  I can also easily share pictures and links.

Feeds from Friends: Updates made by user’s friends on leading social networks and content sharing sites appear in real time in the “Feeds from Friends” tab on the contact list.  The user can comment on these updates directly from his/her ICQ and the comment will appear also in the relevant social network/site.  ICQ users can see updates from all their friends in the various social networks – not just from friends that have ICQ.

My Box: The “My Box” tab on the ICQ Contact List is the place where ICQ users get all notifications of their personal online activity – who commented on my status and in which site, who liked the photos I uploaded, etc.

New User Profile: ICQ 7 presents a more enhanced user profile – both within the client and on the Website.  The user profile is the place where users can display who they are by sharing pictures and personal updates on their page.  The new user profile is now offered in color schemes that are fully customizable to suit the user’s mood. Additionally, the new user profile allows ICQ users to view their friends’ contact lists and add new people to their own contact list, thereby increasing their circle of friends.

Picture-Sharing Tool: A new, quick and fun application for sharing pictures with friends:

Faster, Lighter: ICQ 7 performance has been vastly improved with installation time reduced by nearly 50% and requested space for installation reduced approximately by 30%.

ICQ 7 offers a Social Messaging client that enables quick and easy communication friends from across networks, ability to view real-time updates from: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious. ICQ’s Managing Director, Eliav Moshe, says:

“ICQ 7 brings Social Messaging into play, integrating users’ online social world with their personal communication tool.  The new version answers users’ needs for a quick and easy communication tool that also helps you be up to date with everything that’s going on in multiple social networks and content sharing sites.  With a loyal community of over 42 million users worldwide, we are working on the upcoming integration of local social networks into ICQ 7 as well.”

It is only fitting that the company that was the pioneer of the Web 2.0 era has now integrated this Web 2.0 world into one manageable space in the best possible manner.  Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. In my opinion it offers the best solution we have today for one platform which integrates all my social interactions into one convenient platform.

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(Disclosure: Blonde 2.0 is ICQ’s social media firm)