Facebook's Timeline Era

digital lab white paper the new facebook
Facebooks Timeline Era

managing your brand through facebooks evolution
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The evolution of Facebooks social ecosystem

in just a few years, facebook has become the top destination on the web (outside of search), created a host of new behaviors among people and become both an important and confusing place for brands to participate in the social ecosystem. The avalanche of new features, design and technology Facebook has announced recently are among the most significant of the many changes the worlds dominant online social network has made in its short history. And, as always, Facebook users will adjust to the changes and incorporate the most useful features into the way they use the platform as a personal and brand communications channel. Lets be clear: Facebook is about people and for people. Mark Zuckerberg and company have been driven to facilitate connections between people that deliver on the basic human desires to belong, share and learn. Facebook wasnt built as a marketing channel for brands, but with the emotional connection that some brands have and many brands want, it was obvious to any marketer that Facebook held tremendous potential to connect with the people who ultimately make their brands successful. The recent changes to the Facebook platform for both users and brands will have a tremendous impact on how everyone participates in the space. Its our belief that the Timeline Era will force the most significant re-thinking of how brands participate in the Facebook community since Fan Pages were introduced in 2007. BBDO Digital Labs SocialWork team has analyzed the platform changes ushered in during Facebooks Timeline Era to provide strategic insights, creative direction and technical considerations for brands who are considering how their presence and participation on Facebook will need to evolve. david jones | social strategist darrin patey | director, creative technology
Table of Contents
4 imperatives of the timeline era 5 the timeline era 13 notifications
What Facebooks changes mean from the perspectives of strategy, creativity and technology. Facebook profiles get a significant facelift and frictionless sharing is ushered in. The Facebook ecosystem keeps users informed and engaged.
16 brands unbound
25 about socialwork
The evolution of the Facebook platform has an impact on how brands will stay relevant and engaged with their champions. Digital Labs approach to social media integration.
So the next five yearsthe next era is going to be defined by the apps and the depth of engagement that is now possible now that everyone has their connections already in place and this whole network has already been established. So, its an exciting time to be a part of building all these new social apps that are now possible mark zuckerberg
Imperatives of the Timeline Era

embrace ecosystem
Fully embracing the entire Facebook ecosystem is key to connecting with your fans and advocates. From Open Graph on your site, to a robust and interactive page, to compelling and useful apps, to notifications and smart use of Facebook media, creating the right recipe for your brand is crucial to social success that drives business results. Timeline has created an inflection point that provides an interesting opportunity for brands to rethink how they are participating with their communities, while on the flipside, brands who havent fully realized their Facebook presence have an opportunity to catch up with what is, arguably, a leveled playing field.
the
content conversations
For a brand in the social space, the value of the relationship is obvious; loyalty, advocacy, and revenue. For the consumer, the reason to be friends with a brand is less obvious. Lets face it, people know what your product costs and where to buy it (or can easily find out) and they probably arent interested in discussing last nights game with you (unless your brand is last nights game). And that is why the content of your conversation is so crucial in creating a connection that your consumer also regards as having value. It requires that you know who you are as a brand, and more importantly, that you listen and learn and adapt to what your friends are telling you, sharing with you, and asking of you. Easier said than done, but well worth the effort.
for
offer utlity
activate advocates
Activate your fans to take some sort of business action that helps drive your business forward. Create unique experiences that makes fans feel valuable: provide VIP access for fans only, give them first crack at sampling a new flavor, recruit a focus group from your community, crowd source ideas. Start thinking about unlocking the power of the motivated brand champions on your Page. Nothing shows the power of a brand than the strength of its community to carry the brand on their collective shoulders to help promote and/or defend with the situation calls for it.
your
Simply put, the need for brands to offer utility cannot be understated. As a brand, you want to be part of your consumers actual lifenot just their virtual one. Offering utility that starts inor extends out intothe real world and then uses the Timeline canvas to record and amplify whatever they are participating with through your brand will be the quickest and most powerful way in. What brand or product extensions can you create that will add value to their story as well as yours? How or where do they already use your product, is there a story to tell, and what are you doing to facilitate the frictionless sharing of that story? This is the sweetspot.
The Timeline Era.

the changes facebook has made recently are arguably the most significant of all the platforms facelifts since its inception. with the goal of frictionless sharing that makes it easier to share more activity and a revamped personal profile page that displays a graphic chronology of your life from birth, facebook has entered what we call the timeline era. while introduced to personal profiles first, brand pages have also undergone the Timeline transformation, which changes the brand experience considerably. not to be overlooked is a more seamless integration of mobile in the facebook ecosystem. mobile apps built to connect with facebook can easily be added to the timeline directly from a mobile device where they will be able to easily post new content. facebook has also released its first native ipad app, which takes full advantage of the tablets touch capabilities and swipe-to-navigate features. as a further hattip to mobile, any apps that send notifications to facebook can be opened from within the facebook app.
The Timeline Era: Profiles

profiles were a kind of set it and forget place within the platform. like many people, you filled this out when you first joined up and likely havent updated much of it since. Other than changing your Profiles image on a regular basis, its certainly not the central point of our Facebook experiences. With the launch of Timeline, our profile becomes a digital scrapbook featuring the important moments in our lives. If you viewed Facebook as the evolution of the personal website in standard definition, then youll see Timeline as the move to HD: bigger, clearer and visually arresting. The cover image is the largest personal statement thats been allowed in Facebooks somewhat Spartan design aesthetic to date. This image is a dramatic visual headline for your personality and profile and will be used to make statements, show affinity, poke fun, illustrate an emotion or celebrate relationships. The Profile image essentially stays the same and will be the image that accompanies your activity throughout Facebook, whether it be on Walls, Newsfeeds or other notifications. next page: comparing the new and old profile

the old facebook profile the new facebook profile
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strategy Timeline becomes a much more personal space. Users will share content here that says something specific about them or how they wish to be perceived. Brands will have to understand how deep their connection is with their fans to determine why that individual would want them to be a part of their Timeline. creative Among the many changes to overall profile layout, the new Cover Image feature offers perhaps the most immediate and dramatic opportunity for creative expression. Several designers have offered creative takes and interesting ways to hack the design with some impressive and unexpected results. There is no doubt brands will want to focus on getting featured in their fans Cover Image, Profile images will become less of a focus due to format and the likely shift in user behavior that is sure to occur as a result. Brands will also want to ensure their own posts include formatted media (photos, videos) that provide visual interest and increase the chance of being featured on the user. tech The push towards Timeline means that inclusion of meaningful, planned Open Graph metadata on every piece of web content needs to be top-of-mind for developers. Beyond the obvious title and image tags, content identifiers like og:audio and og:video let Timeline know which template to use when displaying a users content. These same pieces of metadata are consumed by all four of the key points of distribution on Facebook when theyre ingesting your content: Timeline, Apps, News Feed, and Ticker.
The Timeline Era: Apps

facebook applications have been a huge part of the experience for many years, with social-powered casual gaming (Scrabulous, Farmville, Cityville, Mafia Wars) giving users the ability to have asynchronous game experiences with friends, generate customized Profile images, enter contests, etc. Many apps are of the fun & done variety where you do one thing (customize a Profile image) and never return. While these will still have their place, the Timeline Era will expect much more utility from apps. Apps that allow users to share ongoing accomplishments and activities that say something about myself will earn pride-of-place in the Timeline. Accomplishments in exercise, adventures in cooking, choice of music, books or movies are all easily shared with Timeline as they are performed. Earning a place in this limited real estate will be crucial for brands considering apps as part of their Facebook program. A new class of Lifestyle Apps will become much more social. If you see a friend listening to a song on Rdio, or watching a TV show on Hulu youll be able to click on the notification and listen or watch along with them without leaving Facebook. next page: rdio as an example app
The Timeline Era: Apps

strategy Facebook apps have traditionally covered a lot of emotional territory for users. From games to self-expression to contests to lifestyle. Getting published in a users timeline will be reserved for those apps that deliver something of real value to someones life and allow them to define who they are to their friends. creative Pure creativity may take somewhat of a back seat to utility in this area, although the ability to marry both will certainly increase the likelihood for users to stick with your app over the long term, and the potential for its posts to be featured by the user in the widescreen option available. What the content says and how it goes about saying it, including the imagery that goes along with each post, will be a key-determining factor. Does it help express their own creativity? If not, why not? In addition, this new era begs us to question the very definition of an app as we knew it. The ability to customize Likes to communicate more precisely just exactly what the user is doing, sharing, and feeling offers creative flexibility and opportunity that simply didnt exist before. tech The new Open Graph API gives apps a strong, tailored presence within the Timeline. Within apps, Open Graph Actions like Cooked It! replace the familiar Darrin Patey likes Ultimate Roast Chicken Recipe news feed lines. Even tighter integration is made available through the Add To Timeline social plugin, which pushes Actions straight from an app to the Timeline. The effect of this is an aggregation of a users actions in one tidy bucket within the Timeline.
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The Timeline Era: Permission

strategy While always about sharing what youre doing, where you are and uploading photos and videos for your friends to see, Facebook has determined that there were too many barriers, or too much friction caused by the multiple permission steps required in granting apps the ability to post on your behalf. Facebook, never an organization to err on the side of protecting privacy, has eliminated the need for apps to ask you to share information about yourself more than once. Users will provide a one-time authorization and the app will be able to populate Timelines, newsfeeds and tickers each time the app is used. tech The revamped Authorization dialogue features a new data point that, when populated in the App Settings, unlocks new Timeline-specific features. The Add Data to Profile URL parameter holds the path to a New User flow. This flow can be realized as a simple Perforated Unit within Timeline that prompts a user to initiate your New User flow. Conversely, Facebookers not using your app can be led to your New User flow through Add To My Timeline buttons on current users Timelines.
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The Timeline Era: Serendipitous Discovery

strategy Making it easier to share more content more frequently allows for what Mark Zuckerberg calls serendipitous discovery. While admirable, to be casually seen in the ticker or newsfeed wont be enough certainty for brands. In order to ensure awareness for their apps, Facebook media will be required to take the serendipity out of the discovery for brand apps. The world is going mobile and Facebooks already seeing more than 425 million users access Facebook via mobile devices. Through Zuckerbergs desire for frictionless sharing the process for authorizing apps to write to your Timeline will be streamlined. Brands will need to tread carefully when creating apps that have access to your fans Timelines. Finding the zone between useful and spammy is sure to trip a few brands up, but if youre considering your brands value to people above all else, youll err on the side of caution or risk being banished to Facebook purgatory. tech One of the Open Graph APIs greatest gifts to developers is its position as a pivot point between all of Facebooks key distribution streams. The Ticker demonstrates this handilyas a completely new interface, it was integrated painlessly with thousands of apps thanks to its complete integration with the existing API. Any Open Graph-enabled app automatically started pushing content to the Ticker the moment it was turned on. Add to this the simple new triggers for creating custom actions and you start to get a picture of the comprehensive plan behind 2011s introduction of the Open Graph API.
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Notifications.
while not as arresting as timeline, facebook has made significant alterations to how it notifies your network about your activities. the notifications ecosystem follows zuckerbergs desire to see more content shared, more opportunities to discover and more interaction to happen as a result.
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Notifications
friend lists With an average of 130 friends, it is difficult to stay in touch with all of your peer groups. Perhaps in response to Google + and its circles organizational structure, Facebook introduced lists. You can categorize your friends into various lists and easily read them in your News Feed or aim status updates exclusively at a particular list. news feed The News Feed, Facebooks notification backbone, has been modified to respond to user behavior. By blending Top Stories and Recent Stories together, News Feed ensures you dont miss the most important things because you havent been on in a few days. If your friends have interacted with certain content more than others, then that will earn it a place in Top Stories and youll see that when you the next time you sign in to Facebook. If youre on all the time, then most of the content will be in chronological order. A word of caution: It is very easy to unsubscribe from irrelevant updates or noisy friends or brand pages that are seemingly clogging up the News Feed. A simple click and your brands updates are silenced from the News Feed and very likely never activated again. A less dramatic measure would be a user unmarking content from a brand from Top Stories content, so it will be banished to the Recent Stories section. ticker Exactly as it sounds, Facebooks Ticker is a real time scrolling list of all activities your Facebook friends are currently doing. From adding friends to commenting on status updates to consuming content to interacting with apps, the Ticker scrolls it all in real time on the top right corner of your News Feed. The interesting feature to this river of activity is the ability to click on an item in
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Notifications
the Ticker and interact with it yourself. Whether its commenting on the same story or listening to the same song along with your friend, the Ticker allows for real-time interaction with activities that are happening right now. subscriptions A user who chooses to activate the optional Subscribe button will allow all of their public updates to be shared with anyone who wishes to subscribe to them. This allows celebrities and thought leaders to share their public-facing Facebook content in a more outbound way rather than the perceived dialogue a mutual friend relationship entails. Users who subscribe also have the option of selecting what type and volume of updates they receive. app discovery box When on an apps canvas page on Facebook, users will see an App Discovery Box in the top right. Similar to the Ticker, this box shows the apps your friends have recently used and features links to the apps you have recently used yourself. Clicking on a friends activity expands into a window that allows you to interact with that content by commenting, liking without leaving the current page.
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Brands Unbound.
since facebook launched fan pages (now known as brand pages) for brands in 2007, brands have been rushing to take up residence in this white-hot part of the social web. with a tremendous global growth rate, the ability to use a paid media system integrated into the platform and the network effect of users who are connected to an average of 130 friends, the promise of the platform has had an undeniable pull for brands seeking to leverage the power of online social networks. while timeline will be the most significant change to the user experience, subtle changes to notifications, media, apps and insights will force brands to re-evaluate their presence and participation within facebook.
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Brands Unbound
brand participation Timeline for personal profiles and brands has fundamentally changed the look and feel of the way brands will participate with their fans on the Facebook platform. The Timeline Era is perhaps the most profound change to the Facebook experience since Zuckerberg moved his baby off of college campuses and opened it to the masses. For brands who have treated Facebook as a shadow-web experience outside of the full digital ecosystem, they will need to completely rethink their digital approach and how Facebook fits in to their other domains, social channels and paid media mix. Facebook cant survive without brands spending money on Facebook media units, which is estimated to grow to $7 billion by 2013. By tying page activity into their media units, they are creating a seamless experience for users, but forcing brands to consider how content, conversation and amplification fit together like never before. The recent changes send a clear signal that a brands participation in Facebook will have to evolve to being much more than driving fans to a page. Brands must now look to participate beyond their page and fully embrace the imperatives of the Timeline Era. Timeline for Brands has eliminated some of the traditional page-building tactics, including the use of a custom landing page and calls-to-action from cover images, while adding the ability to tell a deeper story through the variety of ways to post content to the Timeline. And for the first time, brands will be able to receive direct feedback from their fans (and detractors) through direct private messaging from the brand page, should a brand wish to turn this functionality on.
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Brands Unbound
open graph At the end of 2011, more than seven million apps and websites integrated with Facebook through whats called the open graph. But this innocuous sounding functionality is not entirely understood by man. Think of it this way, its the free piece of technology that lets a brand connect their main domain any other piece of content on the web to Facebooks functionality. When a user connects via like buttons on items or pages or signs on to a site using their Facebook profile, a brand has access to a users entire web ecosystem via Facebook. Not only are brands able to send their content into the Facebook platform, but theyre given access to analytics that allow them to segment their users based on all the things theyve liked across the web, so a brand can draw deep connections between themselves and other things out there. beyond the like In its simplest form, the original Facebook Connect and subsequent Open Graph allowed web sites to display Facebook Like buttons in various pieces of content, but that always seemed kind of limiting. Liking something is a very specific act of endorsement that doesnt cover every action someone would take with your content. Recognizing this limitation, Facebook has gone beyond the Like and added a variety of actions that can be displayed and shared through the Open Graph. Web pages can now let visitors share their actions on Facebook through a much more contextual lexicon. If youre looking at a recipe you can share that you Cooked it, or Listened to music, or Read an article. Facebooks also allowing developers to customize their own actions in relation to their content.
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Brands Unbound: Timeline for Brand Pages

strategy While the look and feel will allow for a rich creative treatment to Facebook pages, the same strategic considerations remain. Brands need to land on a human voice for the page that engages fans through consistent and interesting content, valuable experiences and real-time interaction. You cant go wrong in valuing and rewarding your fans commitment for spending time with you on your page. Content, conversation and images will work more closely together to give a much more stimulating experience to fans who visit the page. The ability to pin a post to the top of the timeline for a week also offers an interesting way to call attention to specific content. Smart use of all the real estate on the page will provide fans with a lively and curated experience with the brand. creative Timeline for brand pages offers exciting creative potential. The voice and image of the brand on Facebook will no longer be as fleeting as its been in the past. From the large cover photo to custom app icons, to images in posts getting a larger canvas, to the ability to highlight content that expands to full-width, brand pages will be much more visually arresting and provide a more branded experience. For brands that take advantage, curating their personality through conversation, creative posts, the stuff they like and the comments they receive in return will require plenty of thought and a truckload more time to manage.
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Brands Unbound: Real-Time Insights

since page insights were launched in 2007, its probably safe to say that those really into web analytics have felt they wereunderpowered. Sure you could get some decent information based on the profiles of your fans, but really advanced engagement metrics had to be bolted on or performed manually. People Talking About This The new page insights, while still not perfect, offer an evolved take on what success looks like in social. Facebooks introduction of the People Talking About This metric as a complement to the number of fans on a page sends a strong signal to visitors about the vibrancy and relevance of the pages content as this metric is based on people engaging with the content through likes, comments, @ mentions, check-ins and photo tags. If there are a lot of fans, but very little action, the gap between to those who have admin access to a page. Unlike the individual engagement of PTAT, this metric shows how big a potential reach your page has by calculating the number of fans you have multiplied by the number of their friends. I guess its kind of cool to see numbers in the millions, and its a number that agencies have been supplying to reach-conscious clients for a while based on the popular metric of each Facebook user having an average of 130 Friends. We much prefer the new Weekly total reach which adds up the exposure delivered by the whole Facebook ecosystem of posts, engagement and ads. Deeper Dive Page demographics have also improved significantly. You are now able to look at demographics splits for Fans, Reach and Talking About This separately, which will allow page owners to have a deeper understanding of who is participating with their page and its content. There is also a deeper dive on your last 500 recent posts that let page owners see how well their content is performing over its first 28 days with stats comprising Reach, Engaged Users Talking About This and Virality. If youre not using a social media marketing software package such as BuddyMedia, Vitrue, Shoutlet or This Moment that generally have more detailed stats packages, this is definitely an improvement on what Facebook has been giving us out of the box. However, if you still find that youd like a little more than what Facebook is offering, there are low-priced options like AllFacebookStats.com and EdgeRankChecker.com that can add more detail to your analytics.
You could get information based on the profiles of your fans, but really advanced engagement metrics had to be bolted on.
the two numbers will be stark and perhaps turn potential fans off. While the metric is very new, a look at several top brands show that People Talking About This is between 10-20 per cent of their total fan base on any given day. It will be interesting to see where this metric levels off over the next little while particularly since you now dont need to be a fan of a page in order to leave a comment on the wall. Friends of Fans Friends of Fans is another interesting new stat available only
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Brands Unbound: Insights
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Brands Unbound: Media

while much maligned in some media circles, facebooks advertising units perform really well when used as a tactical complement to any experience youve created on Facebook. The options available serve all sorts of price points and sophistication levels. Theres self-serve you can buy with your credit card or you can get your media buying agency involved or work with a Facebook advertising partner who has direct access to their advertising API. As an auction-based, pay-per-click system, some of the most effective media campaigns have been performed by those familiar with the optimization of search marketing. The ad API vendors such as Ad Parlor and TBG are able to easily deploy multiple combinations of art & copy, determine whats working best and then focus the ad buy on the creative thats driving the best results. If youre trying to recruit fans to your page, its not uncommon to see new fans being added at a rate far below $1 per fan. The power of the ad units is your ability to target them to exactly the people you are trying to reach by demographics, location, interests and more. If youre wondering how Facebook makes money, this is it. They are expected to sell more than $5.78 billion in ads in 2012. Facebook is clearly trying to demonstrate its value to brands in all the touchpoints of its ecosystem. Getting the most out of Facebook will depend on how well brands maximize the dynamics of experience, conversations, notifications and amplification. Throwing up a page with your logo and a community manager just wont be enough to get noticed any more in Facebooks 800 million channel universe.
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Brands Unbound: Engagement as Advertising

page post ads New ad units have been introduced as part of the Timeline Era, including an interesting new unit called Page Post Ads. Brands can now add an expandable unit on to a sponsored story ad, which gives users the ability to see something their friend likes, but also be exposed to branded content as well. app activity ads With Facebook moving beyond the like as the sole verb allowed in its ecosystem, sponsored stories (which have been a huge success for advertisers) will now include any acceptable action word. (Before you think about it, profanity is filtered out.) What makes this truly engaging is the added functionality of tying a call-to-action to an activity taken in a Timeline app thats then turned into a Sponsored Story. For example, Suzy is logged into Hulu with her Facebook account. What shes watching can be turned into an ad that her friends see, along with a link to buy the DVD set. While this was talked about at F8, it hasnt launched on the platform yet.
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Brands Unbound: Reach Generator

facebook has launched a new approach to advertising they call Reach Generator and Premium. Everything starts with your organic page content, and gets amplified throughout the Facebook ecosystem with the ability to reach more of your fans more often, while also stretching into your fans personal networks. Premium ad units have been tweaked slightly, but unavoidable social and contextual ads will begin appearing in news feeds (both web and mobile) and on the logout screen for the first time. If you hadnt considered Facebook to be a media company before, its pretty clear now that they are looking to create end-to-end advertising solutions for big brands throughout the world.
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About SocialWork
social isnt a channel, medium, skill or content strategy; its a behavior. not a new behavior, but a new way of instantly connecting and collaborating with communities of shared interest. how we connect to this world will define our ability to make brands more valuable to people and people more valuable to brands. this real-time environment requires a careful alchemy of insights, creative, conversation and amplification, which is exactly what socialwork guides us to deliver through the strategic planning, creative development, execution, paid media community management and insights phases of our work.
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About SocialWork
SocialWork comprises three equally important trains of thought that contribute to success in the social spaces: 1 2 3 Getting to social-ready work The role of paid media Executing in the social spaces trigger truth Listen, analyze and understand the online conversations around a brand or topic; use these insights to design the social experience recruitment Use media and other amplification opportunities to efficiently attract people to your social experience interaction Youre always on and must be in constant contact with those who have honored you with the time they spend in your social presences give value Provide ongoing opportunities and experiences that make it worthwhile for your community to stay engaged get value Activate the community to take a win-win business action enrich Reward a loyal community with exclusive, medium-specific opportunities return Extract insights from the space that help the brands business and informs its future decisions getting to social-ready work Understanding how social fits into peoples lives as part of our insights and strategic planning ensures that the social layer is properly considered throughout the ideation phase of our work. Its more than simply coming up with an idea for a TV ad and convincing a brand that the more outrageous ones would make a great viral video. Sometimes social is THE idea, sometimes it supports an idea and sometimes social is not involved at all. the role of paid media Its naive to believe that social media and social networks are the end of advertising and the advent of a new era of technology-driven word-of-mouth marketing. Paid media has a tremendous role to play in the success of many social media programs. Contextually relevant, strategically placed advertising within social platforms can go a long way to driving awareness, grabbing attention and bringing the right people to the social presence that has been carefully crafted for them. executing in the social spaces At the heart of SocialWork is a framework for how we approach social media planning, execution and evaluation. Its a real-time acronym for the real-time social media world and lays out the steps to follow for a winning end-to-end social strategy. We call it TRIGGER.
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More Information
blogs Digital Lab blog: www.digitallabblog.com SocialWork blog: www.thesocialworkblog.com Dave Jones: www.davejones.ca Darrin Patey: www.darrinpatey.com whitepapers All Digital Lab whitepapers can be found here: http://digitallabblog.com twitter Digital Lab: @TheDigitalLab Proximity WorldWide: @ProximityWW BBDO: @BBDOWorldWide Dave Jones: @doctorjones Darrin Patey: @dpatey david jones social strategist david.jones@proximity.ca Proximity Torontos head of social media strategy, David works with brands such as RBC, MolsonCoors, Bayer, MARS and Campbells, while also leading the development of the firms SocialWork practice. darrin patey director, creative technology darrin.patey@proximity.ca If it can be conceived, it can be done thanks to Darrin. His technical mastery of the social spaces makes good ideas great and brand experiences really cool.
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digital lab white paper the new facebook