Facebook have introduced an interesting new feature, ‘”People You May Know”. The idea is to help you to connect to friends that you may not have known were on Facebook.

The system will match data from your profile with many others to see if there are any common areas such as employment and schooling. It is understandable. If one of your co-workers is on Facebook then why not connect with them - then again, perhaps Facebook is your escape.

To quote from the Facebook blog:

We introduced this feature somewhat recently with the specific intention of helping the newest people on Facebook find their friends quickly

A noble idea and for most people, and ideal way to connect with friends. The blog article further explains:

If you are already friends on Facebook with some people from your last job, for example, you may find some more of your former coworkers (assuming they are visible to you in search) among the “People You May Know’ suggestions.

I wonder how many people will suddenly start working for some of the larger companies so they can snare the friends lists. I can see unethical individuals signing up for an account claiming to be a student from a certain highschool in the area they want to target, adding as many friends as possible and then spamming them.

Facebook has the best of intentions and this feature has a lot of merit. It will be interesting to see how Facebook handles any potential issues down the track.

I am not a stats person, however some stats stand out and should be taken into account when planning any campaign. The stats from the Facebook stats page do make for some interesting reading. So here is a did you know?

Did You Know?

• There are more than 70 million Facebook users
• Facebook is the 6th most-trafficked website in the world (comScore)
• Facebook is the 2nd most-trafficked social media site in the world (comScore)
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• More than 6 million active user groups on the site
• The top three countries are the USA, UK and Canada
• Remaining top ten countries are: Turkey, Australia, France, Sweden, Norway, Colombia, and South Africa
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the Web (comScore)

Apart from the traffic statistics, the over 25 demographic increase and the top countries list are interesting statistics. Where much focus of late has been on the under 25 age group, the balance is returning as moms and dads sign up to stay in touch with their children. The international numbers are interesting with Turkey and Australia at four and five respectively. These countries have much lower populations than France and many of the other countries that don’t appear in the top ten.

These stats could certainly be useful when trying to put together a marketing campaign, particularly if you are considering using Facebook as part of that campaign.

If you like to keep up with what is going on with your friends on Facebook then you may like this handy little social blogging plugin. The plugin requires WordPress 2.5 and above.

To quote from this social blogging plugin’s homepage:

this plugin will process your Friends status updates RSS feed and/or your Facebook notifications feed, and add a widget for each to your WordPress admin dashboard.

This social blogging plugin enables you to keep up with your friends without having to visit Facebook. Handy if you are not able to log into Facebook for any reason.

The latest release from Facebook may be of interest to those involved in social marketing. Facebook have released a new feature called Facebook Lexicon which is similar to Google Trends.

Facebook Lexicon lets you see which words and phrases on popular on Facebook Walls. You are able to compare up to five different words or two-word phrases. The results are made available in the form of graph. Unfortunately you cannot get any deep data such as graphical or demographics, only a simple graphical representation.

Where it will interest social marketing efforts is that you will be able to identify what is ‘hot’ and whether or not your particular area of interest is popular. You may also be able to gauge whether or not you are having any influence when trying to increase the buzz around a particular keyword.

It will be interesting to see whether or not it does have an impact on social marketing strategies. Information like this can be very handy when planning strategies. By checking with the Facebook Lexicon you may find that where you have been using a word or phrase, just a slight alteration could bring it closer to the limelight giving your marketing activities a gentle push.

Facebook have more innovations in the pipeline so perhaps they are starting to ‘grow up’ and become more focused on what users want. Gone are the days when you can tell users what they can have - you either provide what they want, or they move elsewhere.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites at present with millions of pages created by dedicated users. If you have a presence on Facebook you may want to broadcast that to your website visitors.

Facebook makes that easy with badges that you can add to your website. However, there are pretty tight conditions attached to any promotion of your pages.

You are not allowed to use any logos or banners from Facebook apart from the approved badges. You can, however, take a screen shot of your page and reproduce that (unaltered) as a badge. When it comes to wording, you may not make any statements that could imply a Facebook approval of your website.

Terms such as “find us on Facebook” are ok whilst terms such as “see our Facebook page” are not allowed and Facebook will impose harsh penalties if you transgress.

They have even gone to the extent of asking that you include “Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.” wherever you link to Facebook. To quote from the Facebook page:

3) A registered trademark symbol ® must be included in all print / online displays of logo or wordmark that reference the Facebook brand.

However, if you have a page on Facebook and want to promote it, do it carefully according to their guidelines and you will not have any problems at all.

Social marketing is gaining interest in the commercial world at rapid rate and it is not surprising that niche micro social networks are now becoming popular.

Peter Bowman’s article on micro social networks published on Internet Evolution provides a good insight into the direction the new networks are heading.

As social marketing becomes popular it becomes harder and harder to get noticed. With millions using these networks and the categories moving into the hundreds, gaining credibility within your niche has not only become super competitive, it has become extremely spam ridden.

As Bowman’s article points out:

However, many members get the feeling of becoming lost in crowds of millions. Micro-social spaces offer less diversity to users, but directly identify with their specific desires and interests.

This will become the key to social networking through these micro networks. Each network serves a particular niche drawing individuals from both sides of the commercial fence. This concept is not new. In the past, forums have served very well as niche networks, however the very term forum seems to turn people off. Call the site a social network, or better yet, call it a social bookmarking site and people will come in their droves.

Bowman’s opening paragraph really sums up the trend where he states:

…..they mirror what micro-sites have done to promote brands for many years. Will this growing micro-social trend dilute the existing power of social network elites like Facebook and MySpace , or will they empower more people to participate in a wider selection of online communities based on their individual needs and wants?

The future of micro social networks will be interesting to watch particularly as larger corporations make more use of the concept and develop their own networks. As social marketing opportunities there may be obstacles put in place as the micro network owners try to protect their ‘turf’ by preventing many of the marketing opportunities that are available through the larger networks.

It will be interesting to see how they balance their own needs with those of the social marketing users and the needs of the general public at large - ultimately their own customers.

Social networking is all about value and respect. If you provide good value, you will get respect … and traffic. If you provide questionable - or negative - value, then the members of social networking websites will conclude that you have a lack of respect for them. They’ll either ignore you or ride you out of town on a rail.

So what is “questionable or negative value”? Simple: affiliate links or any other kind of self-promotion. When you join a social networking group and start posting affiliate links, you have just shot yourself in the head. No one will trust you. No one will respect you. Your website will get no traffic. And nobody is going to buy from any of your affiliate links.

OK. So what is “good value”? Simple: valuable information or tools that you give away free of charge. When you join a community and provide “good value”, you are seen as a person who gives good value. So you are respected. If you’re new at this, then your first task is to do a lot of Googling to find valuable information and tools that you can give away free to others in your community. Compile a large list … it’ll come in handy.

The best thing you can do is to actually ask people in the community what they really need. Or listen when they talk to others about it. Then figure out a way to give them what they want. You will gain their trust and respect, which is way more valuable long-term than any affiliate commission you might miss out on today.

Your heart must be pure. Your intention must be to help, to provide value (that word again!). People will trust you when they see that you are genuine, honest, & transparent. But they start out suspicious, because they’ve been burned before. If they think your intention is to do whatever you have to do in order to trick them into buying your stuff, they will know. And they won’t like it. They will beat on you, and they’ll tell anyone who’ll listen what a jerk you are.

On the other hand … if you care, if you bring value to your Facebook community, if you help people, then they will trust you. And they will follow you. You can build long-term relationships with people who will be happy to see you succeed … and may often help … because they like you and they trust you.

Social networking is not advertising. On these social websites, trust is supreme. Blatant advertising kills trust. Providing true value creates trust. And once you have made the connection that creates trust, it’s a natural move for them to go to your website, because they like you and want to know more about you.

That is how to play the social networking game.

You’ve no doubt heard the complaints that advertising on the social networking websites doesn’t get the return expected by online marketers. High pageviews, low click-thru rates.

However, there’s another way of looking at this: social networking websites can deliver a demographically focused audience that is not widely available online. Even offline, only TV can deliver this type of audience.

In February, the 25 top social networking sites put 155 million unique visitors face-to-face with advertisers. MySpace, Facebook & Classmates.com delivered over 70% of that total. Tacking on YouTube and Flickr increases the total to 215 million unique viewers a month. Best estimate for TV is less than 200 million unique viewers per month.

There’s more. According to ComScore Video Metrix, US web users watched over 10 billion videos just in December, 2007. Many of those were soft-pedalling commercials … and many more are ripe to have a short commercial attached to the end.

But the most attractive social networking media feature is the younger demographic with high disposable income, much sought-after by ad agencies and advertisers. It’s too big and too focused an audience for that strong marketing connection to not be made eventually.

Social networking websites may currently be struggling for traditional advertisers, but the signs point to a happy, profitable future for them - together.

MySpace recently began offering members several hundred new applications, in test mode, with many more to come. Members can check out a wide variety of applications, and the developers get to see how their apps perform under the pressure.

MySpace is still the Big Dog of social networks, and they’d like to keep the title. The wide range of apps available in one place has the potential to help MySpace users become even more addicted.

Some samples of new MySpace apps:

• Photo Shout Out - Say it with photos! Add your own voice shout out to your pics, and send to friends.
• Graffiti - Draw graffiti for your friends.
• MindJolt Games - Over 250 games! Play any of the Arcade, Puzzle, Strategy and Sports games we offer for free.
• Flixster - Flixster Movies lets you see what your friends say about movies.
• Blingee Book - Add animated graphics, comments, and all sorts of goodies to your pictures for fun or glamour.
• Quizzes - Take quizzes, surveys, polls & personality tests. Make your own quizzes & share with friends.
• Twitter Sync - Sync your myspace mood status with twitter. Just click the sync button and you’re done!
• Yahoo! Music Videos - Simply the largest collection of music videos on MySpace. Dive in and let the good tunes roll!
• flauntR: Photo Editor and Styler - Style your photos with 1000’s of photo frames, stickers, magazine covers & slideshows.
• Fuser - Your Facebook on MySpace! Note: you must already have a Facebook account to use Fuser.
• Graphics Search Engine - With the all4myspace.com graphics search engine you can search for thousands of (glitter)graphics!
• Spin The Bottle - Join the world’s coolest Spin the Bottle game and pass virtual kisses to tons of hotties.
• 123Greetings Cards - Cards for over 3,000 occasions as well as the everyday thank you, birthday, love & friendship cards.
• Pickup Lines - See a different hilarious pickup line each time your page is displayed.
• Top Friends Cupid - Scientifically analyze 17 different parts of your profile to find out who you are compatible with.
• Jobs - Searching for a job? Let the jobs come to you! This handy widget will tell you who’s hiring!
• and many more

Facebook has almost a year headstart over MySpace in opening up to outside application developers. And where MySpace is starting with a few hundreds of these apps, Facebook now has over 14,000 … which many analysts credit for Facebook’s meteoric rise in popularity the last few months.

Here is a simple 7-step social marketing strategy to help you build a stronger prospect base:

1. If you haven’t done so already, specifically define your very tightly focused target niche market. Use your favorite keyword tool to find the most-searched keywords for your market. Use this list to help zero in on exactly what niche you want to appeal to.
2. Make sure your social networking site profiles are focused on this very specific target. The more focused you are, the more your visitors will see you as a specialist. And we all want to be mentored by the specialist, the expert. The more focused you are, the more appealing you will be to your target market.
3. Go to MySpace or FaceBook or whichever social networking sites you favor. Check the groups on those sites against your keywords. Find groups that are related to your very focused specialty.
4. Add members of those groups to your friends list.
5. Start your own group on MySpace and Facebook and other sites. Again, be very specific. This will stamp you as a leader and will help to raise your profile on that particular social networking website.
6. Invite your friends and those in other more widely-focused related groups to join your group. Keep an eye on these larger groups. Every time someone signs up, contact them to tell them about your group and invite them to join.
7. When you add to your networking website - or your personal web page - send a short, descriptive comment to each member of your group to let them know, and invite them to read the full article. This is especially effective when a comment shows up on a member profile page, so it can be viewed by the public.

What you want is to create a core following of raving fans. This social networking strategy isn’t going to get you huge traffic, but if you give really useful information in a focused niche, you can definitely build a strong fan base that may be very lucrative to you over time

The recruitment website Milkround.com recently surveyed 500 students and graduates about their use of the social networking websites MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo. Results:

• Facebook: 97% of the 500 respondents use it; 93% of respondents favor it
• MySpace: 44% use it
• Bebo: 23% use it

Grads and students were asked to rate the 3 social networking websites on a 1 to 5 scale for

• Contact with friends
• Photo & video sharing
• New relationships
• Social planning
• Networking for jobs
• Overall entertainment

Overall Ratings:

• Facebook: 3.5
• MySpace: 2.3
• Bebo: 1.7

Interesting Results:

1. Only 6% of the students & grads have used their Facebook, MySpace, or Bebo profile in a job search. Overwhelmingly, these sites are used strictly for social networking.
2. 82% of respondents use privacy settings, restricting who can view their profile. Half of these use the most restrictive privacy setting.

MOST Interesting Result:

Results of this survey indicate how difficult it would be for another social networking utility to take market share from Facebook, MySpace, & Bebo. Only 19% said they might switch to a new site with a bunch of whizz-bang gizmos. These students and grads made their original choice of favorite site because that’s where their friends are. A majority would ONLY change if their friends did, and most of these prefer not to change at all, having already invested time & emotion in building their profile.

“Despite suffering its first drop in traffic following 17 months of successive increases since July 2006 in January, Facebook is still immensely popular among students and graduates. It’s clearly ahead of its competitors in terms of staying in contact with friends and sharing files online, Bebo and MySpace will need to improve their usability to come close to toppling the Facebook dominance. However, all of the major three sites would benefit if they could encourage users to meet new people or even think of ways to help users find a job.” - Milkround.com spokesman Mike Barnard

“Googling” is everywhere. We’ve all heard of employees getting fired - or applicants not hired - because of their Facebook or MySpace profile. And when you search for a potential employer, you might find a list of lawsuits, complaints and “IHateAcme.com” websites. Or you might find a list of company press releases. Either way, there’s a good chance what you find will influence your impression.

To monitor that “you” brand:

1. Set up Google Alerts for your name
2. Check Technorati regularly for your name in blogs
3. Check Google Video for your name in videos

How can you help make sure that your “YOU” brand shows up positively & accurately?

Don’t reveal everything to the world in your social networking profiles or on your blogs. Think what you would want to find in the social media if you were hiring “you”. Then create a professional profile to match for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.

Register “yourname.com”, if it’s available. If not, get the .net domain or .org or one of the others. Set up a blog, if you don’t have one, with this domain name. Anyone who links will probably use your name for anchor text. Your blog can link to your Facebook profile, or YouTube video, or Flickr photos, etc. You can write up a bio for your “About me” page & link to a resume.

Link from your blog to your articles posted online, and to the positive pages created about you. Be sure to go to Digg & StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites to bookmark these pages.

Whenever you put something online, remind yourself: “This is eternal.” Because it pretty much is.

You don’t need to do all this reputation management today. But long-range, this plan will strengthen that brand of “YOU.”

Recent changes have opened Facebook up to everyone. Whoever you are, you can now use Facebook to your best advantage, to expand your reach, to promote you, to solidly brand you.

Facebook is not just about old friends from school anymore. Plan: what connections would benefit you most in the future? What really fascinates you? If you could do anything, what would it be? What industry would you work in? What specific people, or what categories of people would be your closest friends & confidantes?

For effective Facebook branding, find groups that fall in your category and join them. Make friends amongst the group members. Go back and read over your personal profile. If you were one of these people YOU want to connect with, what would be your impression of you? Is that a profile of someone YOU would like and trust?

Fill out every box in your profile. The purpose of social marketing is to connect with the right people. Who knows exactly what they will see that will make the connection happen? So jam every G-rated bit of yourself that you can into that profile. You never know who will connect with you because your favorite movie is “The Maltese Falcon.” Give them plenty of intersection points.

As visitors write on your Facebook wall, compare what they say to your brand. You must know what your brand is, have it sharply defined, then eliminate what shouldn’t be there. Get rid of anything that doesn’t contribute to your brand.

To strongly connect with the right people, put out there who you really are. Write on other walls. Put up a comment about their pictures. Ask questions. The more you are part of their Facebook life, the more chance your brand will make an impression. Plus, they see you as being serious about the medium.

Don’t make your profile too busy. If you include a bunch of apps, it will obscure the real you. Keep it simple, so it’s easy to see your Facebook brand.

If you can do video, add a YouTube application to your Facebook profile. And if you can’t do video, learn to. Visitors can really bond with you when they watch your well-planned 2-minute video. Optimum, of course, is an on-brand video that enhances who you are.

Promote your profile. Just doing a profile isn’t enough. It will sit there forever, adding no value to your life or anyone else’s. Strategy #1 is to join those targeted groups and interact with the other group members. And once you have a bit of experience with that … define exactly what would be the ideal group you’d like to join. Then create it yourself. What better way to find the specific people you want to connect with?

Evaluate your Facebook brand at least weekly. Update something. Social marketing is not a sport for hermits. You need to demonstrate that you are serious, and serious visitors will notice. You will get to meet those targeted people that otherwise would never have found you.

Advertising may not be the best way to get new business from social media sites like Facebook and MySpace. The reality is those sites were not designed to be advertising sites. They were designed to be networking sites.

Imagine this: You are invited to a attend a free trade show in your industry. You decide to go, thinking it could be a good way to meet new people, potential business partners, and customers. When you get to the trade show, before you can walk in the door, you are bombarded with purchasing offers and come ons for products totally unrelated to your industry. The people trying to sell you their products don’t know you, they’ve never met you, they haven’t even asked you if you’re interested in the type of product they’re offering. Yet they feel the need to interrupt your focus and try to sell you something you have no need for and have no interest in.

Finally, you make your way inside the meetin. Now you can be at peace. But not so fast. You approach a table to see who is there and find out that it is run by people who are not related to your business or even have a presence in your industry. They are trying to sell you a product. You move on to the next table. It’s a booth and you make some new friends. These people are in your industry and are there for the same reasons you are. You decide to kill some time and hang out. But the moment you walk away from the table you are bombarded with offers from people in unrelated industries for products you have no desire for. Would you go back to that trade show next year?

Social networking sites are for networking. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s a great place to advertise. Your best bet for getting new business at Facebook and MySpace is to set up a profile page and become a networker.   This is best for social marketing. With any luck, you’ll be able to ignore the ads.

(Source) Imagine if all the conversations on Facebook were fed through natural language interpreters in order to understand users’ likes and dislikes. Take this a step further and imagine if all of the users photos were fed through image interpreters to find commercial products. In theory, a system could be created sophisticated enough to identify the clothing brand of a person featured in an image, determine who is influenced by this person and use this information to market to specific targets. Think about the impact on a high-schooler who sees an ad delivered on Facebook featuring the beautiful cheerleader at his school with a Pepsi can in the background. This system could work equally well for co-workers, family members and significant others. The possibilities for ‘relationship driven advertising’ are practically endless.

This kind of system would enable companies to stop spending millions for a celebrity endorsement and start buying a guaranteed recommendation from an influencer of a potential buyer for a fraction of the cost.

Is this what Facebook is coming to? If so then you’ll have to forget everything you know about social marketing.

Yesterday, Search Engine Optimization Journal wrote a post predicting that search engines and social networking sites would integrate to revolutionize both search and social marketing. If SEOmoz is correct, we may be closer to that that we can imagine.

Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow. But Microsoft could be poised to take top traffic and marketshare from Google within five years. Unless Google develops its plan first. With Google partnering with MySpace, which is working hard to play catch up to Facebook, and Microsoft partnering with Facebook while working to play catch up to Google in the search arena, this fight could get really interesting.

There is a major shuffle going on right now in the search and the social marketing industries. Google is losing employees - key employees - fast. Facebook is acquiring them. Yahoo! is losing them. MySpace is tinkering in the background. Ask, of course, is just doing its own thing, and doing it fairly well. But unless Ask develops real social applications that appeal to the masses with the cashes, it won’t be a major player. It’s quite possible that within five years the search/social marketing industry will be dominated to two giants: GoogleSpace and MSNbook. That will be interesting to see.